wage and hour

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On April 5, 2011, the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD) published new regulations. Among other changes, the WHD raised the maximum federal tip credit from $4.42 an hour to $5.12. That means that, under federal law, an employer can pay a tipped employee $5.12 less than the minimum wage so long as…

Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court held that an employee’s Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) retaliation claim can be based on an oral complaint made by the employee to his employer regarding wages or other issues covered by the Act.

An employee of Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics Corp. complained orally to Company officials about the Company’s timeclocks…

Just weeks after the Ninth Circuit created a circuit split by ruling that pharmaceutical sales representatives are exempt under the Fair Labor Standards Act’s outside sales exemption (see our earlier post on that decision), the Supreme Court has declined to hear Novartis Pharmaceutical Corp.’s appeal of a Second Circuit decision reaching the opposite conclusion. As…

In August 2008, sales representatives from GlaxoSmithKline PLC filed a class action against the company, claiming they were non-exempt and entitled to overtime pay. They had always been treated as exempt by the company under the FLSA’s outside sales exemption. However, they argued, in part, that their exempt classification was improper because they do not…

In addition to adding 350 new wage-and-hour investigators to its staff, the U.S. Department of Labor recently announced a new collaboration between its Wage-and-Hour Division and the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Lawyer Referral and Information Service that will likely further increase the amount of FLSA and FMLA litigation.  Through this new collaboration, which…

The federal health care reform legislation passed in March of this year included an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), requiring employers to provide reasonable unpaid break time to nursing mothers to express breast milk for the nursing child.
Continue Reading DOL Issues Guidelines on New Requirement for Break Time for Nursing Moms

Less than a month after the New York Times ran an article on the DOL’s position regarding unpaid internships, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division has released a Fact Sheet explaining the test used to determine whether an intern is an employee under the FLSA. Although the test – which is laid out in one of our previous posts – remains unchanged, the Fact Sheet provides information regarding the test’s factors that may be useful to employers trying to discern whether their interns are covered by the FLSA’s overtime and minimum wage provisions.

The first factor is whether the internship, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to training which would be given in an educational environment. The Fact Sheet provides additional detail on how to analyze this factor, noting that this “educational environment” often exists where a college or university exercises oversight over the internship program and provides educational credit. Also, the more the internship provides the individual with skills that can be used in multiple employment settings, as opposed to skills particular to one employer’s operation, the more likely the intern would be viewed as receiving training.

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Continue Reading DOL Issues a Fact Sheet Regarding Unpaid Internships

Researchers have found that the number of unpaid internships has risen, likely due to employers’ limited ability to provide new paying jobs and students’ willingness to gain increasingly hard-to-come-by experience. However, officials from the Department of Labor have indicated that many unpaid internship arrangements violate federal law.
Continue Reading DOL to Scrutinize Unpaid Internships