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Apparently inspired by the tidying up trend, the Department of Labor threw out two sections of its interpretation concerning the commission sales exemption from overtime that no longer gave it joy.  The commission sales exemption covers sales employees who are primarily paid by commission.  To come under the exemption, the employee must be employed in a “retail or service” establishment, must earn at least 1.5 times the minimum wage, and more than half the employee’s compensation for a representative period (not less than one month) must represent commissions.
Continue Reading DOL Streamlines Its Regulation Interpreting Commission Sales Exemption from Overtime

Various federal agencies have recently issued additional COVID-19 guidance of significance (more or less) to employers, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Department of Labor (DOL), and the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA). Some of this guidance applies to workplaces and employers generally, while others target specific industries, such as bars and restaurants, manufacturing, child care, schools, and mass transit. We summarize these developments below.
Continue Reading COVID-19 Agency Update: CDC and OSHA Issue Reopening Guidance, EEOC Explains Accommodation of High-Risk Workers, IRS Expands Employee Retention Credit, DOL Adds to FFCRA Q&As, FEMA Provides Exercise Starter Kit for Reopening

During the past week or so, various federal agencies have issued additional COVID-19 guidance of significance (more or less) to employers, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Department of Labor (DOL), and the Veterans’ Employment and Training Service (VETS). We summarize these developments below.
Continue Reading COVID-19 Agency Update: CDC and Essential Workers, EEOC and Non-Discrimination, OSHA and COVID-19 Recordkeeping/Enforcement, DOL and Unemployment Compensation Under CARES, and VETS and COVID-19 National Guard Service

I don’t like it when the federal agencies don’t play fair. I previously blogged about the EEOC’s sneaky change in its position on whether sexual orientation discrimination is covered by Title VII (it revised its guidance without any kind of announcement. It was just suddenly… the exact opposite). And now, the Department of Labor has pulled the same trick with regard to its guidance on the Families First Coronavirus Response Act!
Continue Reading Wait – the DOL Made Their FFCRA Guidance LESS Useful?!!

The Department of Labor issued, on September 24, 2019, its final rule revising the salary requirements for exemption from the Fair Labor Standards Act’s mandate to pay overtime for hours worked over 40 in a workweek. The new rule increases the salary required to meet the executive, professional and administrative exemptions to $684 per week (the equivalent of $35,568 per year). The required compensation for highly compensated employees is raised to $107,432.
Continue Reading DOL Issues Final Overtime Rule, Increasing Required Salary Level for Exempt Employees

As promised, today we give you and third and final installment of our three-part series addressing the new opinion letters issued by the U.S. Department of Labor on July 1, 2019.  To read about the other letters issued by the DOL, check out this blog post and this blog post.  The final opinion letter, FLSA2019-9, addresses permissible rounding practices for calculating the number of hours worked by an employee.
Continue Reading U.S. Department of Labor Issues New Opinion Letters: Part Three – Rounding Hours

In our last blog post, we revealed a three-part series intended to address the new opinion letters issued by the U.S. Department of Labor on July 1, 2019.  The second of these opinion letters, FLSA2019-8, addresses whether paralegals employed by a trade organization are exempt from minimum wage and overtime requirements under Section 13(a)(1) of the FLSA – an issue of admittedly more limited interest, except as to employers of such individuals.
Continue Reading U.S. Department of Labor Issues New Opinion Letters: Part Two – Paralegals

On July 1, 2019, the U.S. Department of Labor issued three new opinion letters that address compliance issues related to the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”).  These letters are official, written opinions by the Department’s Wage and Hour Division that respond to fact-specific scenarios posed by employers and employees alike.  We are going to address each of the opinion letters in separate blog posts over the course of the next week.  But for now, let’s dive into the first of the three opinion letters!
Continue Reading U.S. Department of Labor Issues New Opinion Letters: A Three-Part Series (Part One – Bonuses and the Regular Rate)

On April 9, 2018, the Department of Labor announced the issuance of a Field Assistance Bulletin clarifying the recent amendments to the tip pooling provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which were incorporated in the omnibus budget bill that was passed by Congress on March 21, 2018. Additionally (but without fanfare), the DOL revised its Fact Sheet #15: “Tipped Employees Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).” The Bulletin clarifies that employers who pay the full minimum wage to tipped employees may require their participation in tip pools that include workers who are not “customarily and regularly” tipped – an issue that had been subject to significant controversy.
Continue Reading DOL Provides Clarification on FLSA Tip Pooling Amendments

Here we are again on the brink of another possible federal government shutdown, and employers may be wondering how it may impact them. The last time, during the 2013 federal government shutdown, we provided a summary of the shutdown contingency plans for the major employment-related agencies – the Department of Labor (DOL) (which includes the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Wage-Hour Division (WHD)), the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).  So we thought we’d provide you with an updated summary of these plans, which set forth what the agencies will and will not do if there is an actual shutdown.
Continue Reading EEOC, NLRB and DOL Shutdown Contingency Plans – The 2018 Edition