FLSA
Pay Parity: What Is It and How Does an Employer Get There?
Fair compensation requires both awareness and action………… Most HR leaders have heard disheartening statistics about the gender pay gap. PayScale, for example, reported in its Gender Pay Gap Report for 2020 that women make only $0.81 for every dollar men make. And the World Economic Forum has estimated that it will take more than 100…
Read MoreAcademic Studies Diverge on Salary History Bans’ Effects on Worker Pay
States and cities are increasingly barring employers from asking about job applicants’ salary histories with the aim of closing pay gaps, but it remains to be seen whether those laws are having the intended effect, according to recent research. An analysis of salary history bans published earlier this month by researchers at the Boston University…
Read MoreThe Nitty-Gritty of the FLSA’s Overtime Requirements
Imagine a pet store fired one of its workers. The worker, whom we’ll call Rich, is upset — no more paycheck and no more playtime with the animals. He decides to sit down with an attorney, who probes him about how the pet store paid him. Rich made $11 an hour and generally worked 40…
Read MoreFrom Overtime to Meal Breaks, HR’s FLSA Handbook
We have compiled eight stories that encapsulate the most important pieces of recent FLSA news and highlight the insights pay professionals need to understand them. When employers run afoul of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), costly remediation can follow. In 2019, a judge ordered Steak ‘n Shake to pay $7.7 million in liquidated damages to the…
Read MoreAnswers to Wage and Hour Questions You’re Afraid to Ask as Workers Return
As states lift stay-at-home orders and businesses prepare to reopen their doors to employees, employers face a minefield of issues on the employment law front. One major area is wage and hour law, as many employers had to quickly implement layoffs, furloughs and wage cuts in the wake of the pandemic. As employers bring back…
Read MoreImplications of COVID-19 on Your Health and Welfare Benefit Plans
Employers are grappling with employee benefit issues in response to the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (“COVID-19”). Efforts are being made to pave the way for widespread testing by eliminating cost barriers such as deductibles, copayments, coinsurance, or High Deductible Health Plan restrictions to ensure employees and their families are proactively being diagnosed once symptoms present, to…
Read MoreTime Is Money: A Quick Wage-Hour Tip on … Permissible Deductions from Exempt Employees’ Pay
Most employers are well aware that employees must be paid on a “salary basis” to be considered exempt from the overtime requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”). This means employees must receive the same amount of pay each week regardless of the amount or quality of work they perform for a given week.…
Read MoreDifferent Standards Apply to Equal Pay Act and Title VII Pay Discrimination Claims
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, with its territory comprising the states of Connecticut, Vermont and New York, held that a plaintiff does not need to establish a violation of the Equal Pay Act in order to maintain a pay discrimination claim under Title VII. As the Second Circuit noted in Lenzi v.…
Read MoreTime Is Money: A Quick Wage-Hour Tip on … Inclement Weather
As winter once again approaches, employers, particularly those in cold-weather states, face the recurring specter of inclement weather affecting business operations and employee attendance. While the weather may create stress and disruption for a business and its people, employers must not lose sight of the fact that the rules governing how you pay your employees…
Read MoreFour Ways of Avoiding Liability on Common Wage and Hour Compliance Issues
Wage and hour lawsuits are big news these days. Jury verdicts and settlements capture headlines warning of damages and fees totaling seven or more figures, and class certifications in pending cases exponentially expand the risk posed by a single miscalculation or mistaken designation. How can employers best reduce the risk of becoming the next cautionary…
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