Tag Archives: compensation

Employers Must Pay for “Unauthorized Overtime”

Compensation, Personnel Policies, , , , , ,

I see many employee policy manuals that prohibit “unauthorized overtime”, but employers must still pay an employee his overtime pay, whether the time worked was authorized or not.

Employers need to understand that all governmental enforcement agencies, such as the Texas Workforce Commission (“TWC”) and the U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”), treat paychecks as sacred and not subject to any reduction or withholding because of a disciplinary reason.

Unauthorized overtime can result in disciplinary action, like a written warning, a suspension or a firing, but not docking of a paycheck or any refusal to pay.

The TWC explains it this way in their publication “Especially for Texas Employers”:

Many employers feel that such [overtime] should not be payable as long as the employer has not authorized the extra work, but the DOL’s position on that is that it is up to the employer to control such extra work by using its right to schedule employees and to use the disciplinary process to respond to employees who violate the schedule.

Just saying in your employee handbook that an employee cannot work overtime without prior authorization is not sufficient. You as an employer need to take steps to closely monitor (and pay for) all hours actually worked. Continue reading Employers Must Pay for “Unauthorized Overtime” →

Paying Employees on Salary Soon to Get Expensive

Compensation, , , ,

In July 2016, in all likelihood you as an employer will have to start paying your employees more than $50,000 per year if you want to pay them on salary.  If an employee makes less than $50,440 per year, by this summer that employee will need to be paid on an hourly basis and receive overtime whenever the employee works more than 40 hours in any one workweek.

The new regulations proposed by the Department of Labor last summer to increase the required salary basis under the Fair Labor Standards Act are expected to be finalized in July 2016, according to a statement made by the Solicitor of Labor to the New York State Bar Association.

Currently, an exempt “white-collar” employee who can legally be paid on salary only has to make $23,660 per year ($455 per week) and meet the specific duties of a professional, an administrator, a computer professional or an executive. This summer that number is widely expected to increase to $50,440 ($970 per week) and will be tied to an inflation formula that will raise that threshold number annually.

Once the final rule is released in the summer of 2016, employers could have as few as Continue reading Paying Employees on Salary Soon to Get Expensive →

Texas Employers Need Snow Day Policy

Attendence, Compensation, Forms and Policies, Personnel Policies, , , , ,

Texas employers should have a policy to give employees advance warning of what to expect on a snow day, particularly in the Texas Panhandle, where we often have a couple of inclement weather days per year.

The easiest way to determine whether to keep your facility open or not is to follow your local school district’s decisions and let your staff find out through the media. That relieves you of having to communicate the decision to every employee. It is also helpful to your employees to be able to stay home with school-aged children who have no other place to go that day.

Texas and federal law do not specifically dictate when an employer must be open or closed during inclement weather, but they do dictate how compensation must be determined during those times.

Hourly employees do not have to be paid when they perform no work. Exempt employees, however, have to be paid their normal salaries when your facility is closed for weather reasons. On days when the company is open, but a salaried employee chooses not to travel because of road conditions near their house and therefore performs no work all day long, the exempt employee can be docked for that day or be required to use available paid time off.

The other pitfall with inclement weather days occurs when employees work at home on a snow day. If you give your employees the ability to remotely access their computers, if you allow them to take work home, or if you expect them to check emails and return phone calls on a snow day, you will need to pay them for those work hours (non-exempt employees) or that whole day (exempt employees).

I suggest that every employer adopt some kind of inclement weather policy similar to this one: Continue reading Texas Employers Need Snow Day Policy →

Holiday Gifts and Bonuses Can Trip Up Employers

Compensation, , , , , , , , ,

Employers are generous but sometimes uninformed in December, handing out holiday gifts and bonuses without realizing the legal consequences. As an employer, you have to consider the tax and compensation consequences of your gifts. Bah Humbug!

The Fair Labor Standards Act divides bonuses into two categories: discretionary and non-discretionary. Discretionary bonuses must be decided in the employer’s sole discretion. They cannot be earned by any formula or used as a motivator or incentive. If they are truly discretionary (which is up to the employer to prove), cash bonuses do not have to be rolled into an hourly employee’s regular rate of pay on which overtime is calculated.

Holiday bonuses may be discretionary if they just fall like manna from heaven onto the employee without the employee knowingly working towards the bonus.   Generally, the amounts, timing and basis for the discretionary bonus should not be announced in advance to avoid the appearance of being an incentive.

If the holiday bonus is earned by the employee by meeting certain announced criteria, Continue reading Holiday Gifts and Bonuses Can Trip Up Employers →

Employers Can’t Prohibit Wage Discussions

Employee Rights, , , ,

Many employers require their employees to sign and abide by the terms of some type of confidentiality agreement, confidentiality clause, or non-disclosure agreement as a condition of employment.  Usually, the intent of such an agreement is to protect sensitive information and prevent such information from being discussed outside of the company.  But employers should carefully consider the language and wording of confidentiality agreements to make sure they are in compliance with the standards set forth by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).

While you might think you are well within your rights to require a confidentiality agreement that prohibits an employee from discussing such things as company “financial information” or “personnel information”, the Fifth Circuit of Appeals (which decides federal appeals for cases originating in Texas) ruled in Flex Frac Logistics v. NLRB that such an agreement is unlawful. The ruling applies even to non-unionized companies like yours.

The Fifth Circuit decided that by prohibiting the employee from discussing company financial information and/or personnel information, the employer was infringing upon the employee’s right to discuss and negotiate the terms of their employment, including salary and hours. The NRLA protects activities by employees that would aid in the formation of unions, including free discussion of the employer’s pay practices.

Therefore, if you are contemplating incorporating some type of required confidentiality agreement or non-disclosure agreement into your company policies and procedures, or if you already have an existing confidentiality policy, the terms and conditions should be carefully reviewed to insure compliance with the NLRA.  And keep in mind that the NLRA applies to ALL employers, regardless of whether or not the employer has union employees.  Also, make sure you don’t have any other policies (written or generally understood) or employment agreements that prohibit employees from discussing wages.

Employers Vulnerable to Overtime Claims

Compensation, , ,

As it routinely does, the United States Department of Labor recently released to the media a report of another Texas employer who had to pay back wages to current and former employees for overtime violations. This time the company was Porter Ready Mix Inc., in Porter, Texas and the amount was $173,863. But it could have been almost any employer because the overtime laws are very difficult to understand and follow. The DOL gets more than 26,000 complaints a year and collected $224 million in back wages in fiscal year 2011. Some of its favorite targets are restaurants, construction companies, agriculture, hotels, healthcare providers, landscapers, preschools and other industries that pay lower wages, but no employer is immune. Porter Ready Mix’s mistake? It paid gravel truck drivers by the trip instead of by the hour.

If you as an employer are paying any employee in any manner other than by the hour and paying time and one-half for all hours over 40 worked in one week, you too could be facing a Department of Labor investigation soon. Paying employees by the day, by the trip, by travel time, by commission, by tips, by bonus, by incentive, even by weekly salary can put you in the hot seat. Salaried employees must fall into one of four or five narrow categories to be exempt from overtime. Many employers put employees on salary or another pay scheme without doing any analysis of whether failing to pay overtime is legal based on that particular employee’s job duties.

Don’t rely on your instinct, your competitors, your experience, your employee’s desires or any other resource other than the Fair Labor Standards Act when you set compensation for a new employee or when you are reviewing your current staff compensation. Do your research before you pay any employee on any basis other than hourly plus overtime.