Articles Discussing General Topics Under The FLSA.

Iowa is the latest State to sign a Memorandum of Understanding and join forces with the U.S. Department of Labor to combat employee misclassification. Although Labor Secretary Solis has announced her resignation, it appears that the Misclassification Initiative that she championed continues, at least for now.

Q. We would like to require employees to accept pay via direct deposit. Is this permitted?

I read this morning that there have been 7,064 lawsuits filed under the Fair Labor Standards Act so far this year. I believe this is a record for wage and hour violation claims and the year is only half over. This is also nearly sixty more FLSA lawsuits than was filed in all of 2011 and more than double the amount of cases filed ten or twelve years ago. The Department of Labor’s wage and hour division alone has collected a record $224 million from employers over the last fiscal year, and is continuing its campaign against misclassification of employees, including its cooperation with other federal and state agencies in going after employers who misclassify workers. In other words, this issue is not going away for employers.

On June 4, the U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division announced that a San Antonio-based car wash company has paid $246,438 in back wages to 308 employees following a DOL investigation. Among other things, the DOL found that the company had taken illegal deductions from employees paychecks for items including uniforms, insurance claims, and cash register shortages that resulted in employees’ pay falling below the federal minimum wage.

You’re a savvy employer. Your timekeeping policies are clear. Your employees know that they are required to report all of their work time. Employees sign off on their time records each week. You even provide a procedure for employees to confidentially report any improper actions by their supervisors. Your records are complete, organized, and show that you’ve fully compensated your employees for all reported work hours. But what happens when an employee claims that his supervisor instructed him not to report overtime unless it was authorized in advance, and to record unpaid lunches even on days that he worked through his lunch break? As a recent ruling from a federal district court in Idaho illustrates, even following best practices with respect to recordkeeping compliance won’t necessarily preclude an employee from taking a claim for unpaid overtime to a jury.

Check out my article in the October 2011 issue of Cleaning & Maintenance Management. While focused on the cleaning and maintenance industry, the issues highlighted in the article are generally applicable to a wide range employers.

Recently the U.S. Department of Labor revamped its enforcement data website, http://ogesdw.dol.gov/, adding some snazzy new map displays showing inspection and violation data from OSHA and the Mine Safety and Health Administration.