Articles Discussing Overtime Under The FLSA.

You’ve heard it before, here and likely elsewhere, of the risks of FLSA overtime lawsuits. Yet, these suits continue to make headlines. Simply put, qualified employers must pay employees at least 1.5 times their regular wage for every hour worked in excess of 40 hours per week.

In a significant blow to the efforts of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) to exclude third-party employers from the companionship and domestic services exemption to the FLSA’s overtime and minimum wage requirements, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia today struck down the portions of the regulation applicable to third-party employers. In Home Care Association of America v. Weil,* the court reviewed the DOL’s revised regulation as applied to third-party employers and held it “not only disregard[ed] Congress’s intent, but seize[d] unprecedented authority to impose overtime and minimum wage obligations in defiance of the plain language” of the FLSA. Accordingly, the court granted the Home Care Association’s motion for summary judgment and vacated that portion of the regulation.

Two months after President Obama issued an Executive Order directing the Department of Labor to “modernize and streamline” the agency’s “white collar” overtime exemption regulations governing the scope of the executive, administrative, professional, outside sales, and computer exemptions under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), Senate lawmakers have introduced legislation that builds on this idea. Sponsored by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, the Restoring Overtime Pay for Working Americans Act (S. 2486) would entitle substantially more workers to overtime compensation, and establish recordkeeping penalties for employers.

In Banks v. RadioShack Corporation, three sales associates filed a putative collective action alleging that the Philadelphia area district manager altered and directed others to alter sales associates’ time records, depriving them of minimum wage and overtime pay in violation of the FLSA.

All three branches of government took aim at increasing employee pay on Wednesday. At the executive level, several news outlets have reported that the President on Thursday will direct the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD) to revise its long-standing overtime regulations. At the regulatory level, the DOL’s Employment and Training Administration (ETA) announced that it plans to re-issue a proposed wage rule for the H-2B temporary guest worker program that would likely increase the hourly wages for H-2B workers as well as for U.S. workers recruited in connection with the H-2B program. Finally, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) held a contentious hearing on the proposed Fair Minimum Wage Act, which would increase the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour and index it to inflation, as well as increase the hourly rate for tipped employees.

In a pair of appeals that will have significant implications for employers that utilize the fluctuating workweek (FWW) method of calculating overtime compensation, the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Second and Sixth Circuits are considering whether the payment of incentive compensation (in addition to fixed weekly salary) is incompatible with the FWW method. Nothing says “no good deed goes unpunished” quite like a claim that the payment of additional compensation invalidates an otherwise lawful compensation plan.

Lady Gaga is back in the news, but this time it has nothing to do with her music; just days before trial, the singer — real name Stefani Germanotta — settled a 2011 lawsuit filed by a former personal assistant. It is a case that reminds employers of all sizes that unless their administrative assistants meet all of the requirements of the administrative exemption test, they must be paid overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

On August 16, 2013, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reaffirmed the use of the “fluctuating workweek” method for calculating damages of workers owed overtime pay as a result of misclassification as “exempt” under the FLSA. In Ransom v. M. Patel Enterprises, Inc., the trial court found executive managers of Party City retail stores were misclassified as exempt from the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) when the company paid them flat weekly salaries regardless of the hours they worked. On appeal to the Fifth Circuit, the company did not contest the workers’ status under the FLSA, but argued the lower court improperly calculated overtime damages.