by Kara E. Shea
I recently participated in hosting a Wage and Hour Virtual Summit webinar. Wage and hour compliance — overtime, work-time issues, exempt status — is always a lively topic and typically results in lots of questions and feedback. This time around, most of the feedback surrounded remarks I made about individual liability under [...]

What is the biggest employment law challenge employers have been facing thus far in 2010? An easy answer might be health care reform since companies have indeed started wrestling with whether to grandfather their benefits plans or strike off in a new direction under new sets of rules and regulations.
But for many employment law attorneys [...]

by Jim Brown and Marc Koonin
Companies with employees working in California must always remain mindful of the state’s protectionist wage and hour laws. You must always comply with federal standards and all California laws that provide greater protections for employees than the federal requirements. Failure to do so might be an unwelcome invitation to a [...]

by David S. Fortney, Fortney & Scott, LLC
Well-counseled employers know their company’s compensation systems increasingly are subject to enforcement actions and litigation challenges. The trend of employers facing significant challenges to their compensation systems is both continuing and accelerating.

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the federal law that governs wages and overtime pay, has been the topic of numerous articles in state Employment Law Letters.  We’ve reported on the rise of wage and hour lawsuits filed state courts and we highlighted what federal courts consider “acceptable terms” for an FLSA settlement agreement What [...]

by J. Robert Brame, McGuireWoods LLP
In the 1990s, there was a growing concern about the “criminalization” of corporate law, in part justified by the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which placed real criminal risks on top managers. While Sarbanes-Oxley was no threat to HR managers at first, innovative prosecutors and plaintiffs’ attorneys are changing that, [...]

by Robert C. Nagle
Employers can expect increased enforcement efforts from federal and state labor and tax authorities over what’s believed to be a rising tide of misclassification of employees as “independent contractors.”

Normally in HR Hero Line, we focus on employment laws and issues that affect most employers. But when a state-specific workers’ comp case comes along that involves (1) a worker smoking pot before (2) his job feeding grizzly bears for (3) a company that says its workers were volunteers, (not employees), we think it’s worth [...]

by Chris McFadden
Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), employees may be entitled to compensation for time spent donning and doffing uniforms if they are required to do so at work. A recent ruling by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals addresses the compensability of time spent donning and doffing uniforms and gear when [...]

by Jonathan C. Sterling
Because one of the most difficult tasks HR professionals face is determining whether their employees are exempt, each time a decision is issued on the topic by an appeals court, it’s worth noting and taking guidance from. The latest decision from the Second Circuit relates to the administrative exemption, which applies to [...]