Tag Archives: overtime

Overtime Salary Adjustments Could Violate Equal Pay Act

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The new overtime rule is causing employers to rethink employee compensation, but I fear that one pitfall is being overlooked – an employer who pays a woman less than a man for performing the substantially the same duties could be violating the Equal Pay Act of 1963.

Employers who can’t pay their salaried employees at or above the new white-collar exemption threshold of $47,476 may be forced to pay those same employees on an hourly basis and time and a half for all hours worked over 40 in any one workweek. Overtime scares employers because it is difficult to budget for and requires higher costs for each hour of productivity after the employee has worked 40 hours that week.

So in trying to juggle the new law and payroll costs, employers are reducing pay, overtime opportunities and benefits. That may be good business, but if the impact hits female employees more than male employees, we could see an increase in Equal Pay Act cases.

The Equal Pay Act requires that female employees be paid the same as their male counterparts with substantially similar job duties. “All forms of pay are covered by this law, including salary, overtime pay, bonuses, stock options, profit sharing and bonus plans, life insurance, vacation and holiday pay, cleaning or gasoline allowances, hotel accommodations, reimbursement for travel expenses, and benefits,” the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission points out.

If a woman files a lawsuit against a company for paying her less than a man performing the same work, the employer must show that the male employee’s higher pay is based on a seniority system, a merit system, a productivity system or another factor other than gender. That sounds easier than it is. Continue reading Overtime Salary Adjustments Could Violate Equal Pay Act →

Strange Exemptions to the Overtime Law

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The new overtime regulations are causing employers to take a closer look at the executive, administrative and professional exemptions from overtime, but did you know that there are a number of strange exemptions that allow you to pay specific employees on a salary and not worry about overtime pay?

These obscure exemptions may have more to do with the strength of certain industry lobbyists back in the 1940’s when the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) was passed than they do with any logical reason for exempting these employees. But they are still on the books and may allow a few employers to avoid the rush to reclassify salaried employees by December 1, 2016, when the new overtime rules take effect.

Employees of certain seasonal amusement parks or recreational venues, for example, don’t have to be paid overtime or minimum wage. To qualify, the amusement park generally can’t be in business any longer than seven months of the year, or if it is, be affected so that at least six months of the year, its receipts are cut to 2/3s of the receipts in the six good months. All of the amusement park’s employees are exempt, not just the ride operators and the food concessionaires, but also the accounting, human resources and management personnel, but only as long as they work in the park and not in a corporate office that runs several seasonal parks. How is that for an arcane exemption that won’t help 99% of employers, but could be very important if you own Wonderland Park or a miniature golf course?

Similarly, there are overtime (but not minimum wage) exemptions from the FLSA for these employees: Continue reading Strange Exemptions to the Overtime Law →

Overtime Change: Local Businesses Should Start Planning Now

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Vicki Wilmarth was quoted extensively about the new Department of Labor overtime rule in today’s lead story in the Amarillo Globe-News.

Vicki Wilmarth, an employment law lawyer in Amarillo, said that employers now have two options: Pay the employee the minimum salary of $47,476 or start paying that employee by the hour.

Click here to read the rest of the Globe-News story.

Employers Must Pay for “Unauthorized Overtime”

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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

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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 →

A Texas Employer’s New Year’s Resolutions 2016

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The quiet week between Christmas and New Year’s is the perfect time for you as an employer to consider some resolutions for 2016. What can you do differently in 2016 to be a better employer and to avoid stepping on any legal landmines?

From 28 years of experience advising employers like you on employment law issues, here are my suggestions for 2016 resolutions with links to more information from previous posts on this website about these topics:

  • Resolve that you will make a decision about whether your employees and/or customers can openly carry handguns on your business premises. The open carry law goes into effect on January 1 and allows those who are licensed to carry concealed handguns to start carrying them openly in shoulder or hip holsters. You have the right as an employer to prohibit guns completely on your premises by both customers and employees, to just prohibit employees from carrying guns, to prohibit open carry but allow concealed carry, or to allow everyone to freely carry handguns on your premises. If you choose to ban either open or concealed carry by customers, you will have to post the §30.06 (concealed carry) and/or §30.07 (open carry) signs with the proper wording and font size required by the Texas Penal Code. To just prohibit employees from coming to work armed, you only need to add a policy to your employee policy manual. For more information about Texas gun laws in the workplace, click here.
  • Resolve that you will get ready for big changes in the overtime laws. If you have an employee to whom you pay an annual salary of less than $50,440, in mid-2016 you are going to have to move that employee’s compensation to an hourly rate and pay that employee overtime if he/she works more than 40 hours in any one workweek. Click here for more information about that change to the Fair Labor Standards Act regulations.
  • Resolve that you will stop using any kind of “contract labor”. The landscape has just gotten too rocky to use any worker whom you do not treat as an employee. Just give up on the idea that you can save the taxes or avoid the pains of having employees. The government is really cracking down on misclassification of workers as contract labor, day workers or independent contractors. That means that in 2016, you need to pay taxes on every worker, you need to provide every full-time worker with benefits, and you need to accept that you will have liability if that worker hurts or mistreats someone. Click here for more information about the dangers of misclassifying a worker as contract labor. If you think you are the exception to this rule, don’t proceed without a knowledgeable attorney’s legal opinion.
  • Resolve that you will update your employment policy manual. The requirements for written policies changed dramatically in 2015 due to the changes required by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the National Labor Relations Board and the Department of Labor. Your policy manual is out of date unless your employment attorney has made significant revisions in the last six months. Click here for more information about some of the changes that are now required.
  • Resolve that you will learn and apply the new rules regarding pregnant employees. Take your maternity policy out of your handbook (because it will be considered discriminatory) and add instead a policy that allows pregnancy and maternity leave that is identical to what you allow when someone has a disability or serious illness. That means that you can’t set a standard 6-week maternity leave, but may have to be more flexible with each pregnant worker’s individual needs like the Americans with Disabilities Act requires with handicapped employees. Click here for more information about how to update your procedures regarding pregnant employees to comply with the new regulations.

 

 

 

Employers Face “Joint Employer” Liability with Unrelated Companies

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The National Labor Relations Board ruled last week that two unrelated companies may be held to be joint employers of an employee who works for just one of the companies. Browning-Ferris Industries of California, 362 NLRB No. 186 (August 27, 2015), ruled that unrelated companies may be joint employers even if one employer has no power to hire, fire, supervise or determine the pay of an employee of the other employer.

The NLRB says that it “will no longer require that a joint employer not only possess the authority to control employees’ terms and conditions of employment, but also exercise that authority”.

In other words, if you as a business owner contractually could say anything to your subcontractor about the work you want performed by the subcontractor’s employees, then you can be jointly liable to those employees if any of the subcontractor’s employment practices go awry, even if you never actually exercise any control over your subcontractor’s employees. Continue reading Employers Face “Joint Employer” Liability with Unrelated Companies →

Salary Basis for FLSA Exemptions Raised Dramatically

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Claiming that your employees are exempt from overtime is about to become much more difficult with release of new regulations this week by the U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”) under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”).

On June 29, 2015, President Obama announced that the DOL is issuing proposed rules that will probably go into effect in early 2016. Those proposed rules redefine which employees have to earn overtime on their hourly pay instead of being paid as an exempt salaried employee.

The result could be skyrocketing overtime costs and more frequent wage and hour suits against companies that fail to make this transition carefully.

The advantage for an employer of an FLSA exemption has always been that the employer doesn’t have to track that employee’s hours and doesn’t have to pay overtime wages of 1.5 times the hourly rate for anything over 40 hours worked in one workweek. That advantage will no longer be available to you as an employer in 2016 for those employees you pay less than $970 per week, which adds up to $50,440 per year. Continue reading Salary Basis for FLSA Exemptions Raised Dramatically →

Paying Employees for After Hours Work

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In the last three or four years, there have been several cases filed against employers by nonexempt (hourly) employees who claimed they worked more hours than they were paid for because they checked their work email accounts at home in the evening or they remotely accessed their work files and sent a document to a client or answered a supervisor’s questions after hours. Technology has made this type of work easy and acceptable, but it also has made us as employers sloppy about our pay practices.

Applying the Fair Labor Standards Act, which regulates overtime and minimum wages, has never been easy, but when an employee showed up at the office, punched a time clock at the beginning of the work day and again at the end, paying that employee correctly was simpler.  Nowadays, smartphones, flash drives, remote log-ins, texts, etc., have added a new layer of compliance issues to the FLSA. And attorneys who represent employees in wage and hour lawsuits are taking advantage of the complexity by bringing collective (class) actions against employers for failing to capture and compensate for the time employees spend using all of that technology outside of the office. These cases are very expensive because they court will always award the employee(s) two times their damages plus attorneys’ fees that often greatly exceed the damages.

Don’t stick your head in the sand on this issue and just hope you never get sued. At a minimum, you need a policy in writing addressing these issues. Tell your nonexempt employees that you never want them working “off the clock” and that you will pay them for any after hours work they perform. Let your employees know whether this kind of out of the office work is acceptable, or if not, be prepared to discipline your employees for performing it (but still pay them for it).

Employers Vulnerable to Overtime Claims

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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.