California Employment News: The Regular Rate of Pay and Risks of Getting it Wrong
#WorkforceWednesday: Joint Employment, Coronavirus, Medical Marijuana Protections - Employment Law This Week®
III-44- A Little Help From The DOL
The Domestic Worker Bill of Rights (California Assembly Bill 241 and Senate Bill 1015), enacted in 2013, is a California law that grants overtime pay rights to personal attendants who were not previously entitled to overtime...more
On November 8, 2024, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued Opinion Letter FLSA2024-01. This letter provides additional clarity about whether daily expense reimbursement payments can be excluded from an employee’s regular...more
The Colorado Supreme Court has ruled that Colorado law is not like federal law when it comes to holiday pay. The Court found that the Colorado Minimum Wage Order (currently, COMPS Order 39) requires holiday incentive pay be...more
Last week, the Colorado Supreme Court issued a highly anticipated decision, finding that the “regular rate of pay” under Colorado law does include holiday incentive pay for purposes of calculating overtime. The Tenth Circuit,...more
Recently, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders introduced proposed legislation that would reduce the standard workweek in the United States from 40 to 32 hours. The Bill, titled the “Thirty-Two Hour Workweek Act” (the Act), would...more
I am always interested in cases that analyze what payments should and should not be included in the regular rate. These issues are important to employers because their overtime liability/exposure can be dramatically inflated...more
I read an interesting post by Sara Zorich of Amundsen Davis concerning the year-end wage hour issues that employers must deal with, and I agree with the concepts set forth in that article. There are a number of implications...more
As explained in our previous alert, in October 2023, after Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law increases to New York’s minimum wage, the New York State Department of Labor (NY DOL) issued proposed changes to the tip credit,...more
To determine the minimum rate of pay or salary threshold applicable to certain exemptions from overtime regulations under California law, the Department of Industrial Relations (“DIR”) uses the California Consumer Price Index...more
Now is the time to review overtime exemptions and pay plans for sales employees to be ready for 2024. The changing tech economy has created a class of sales employees who may not fit traditional overtime exemptions. Moreover,...more
In the wake of the pandemic, some employers — opting for the carrot over the stick — have started offering weekly attendance bonuses to incentivize a return to the office. We have recently seen an uptick in employee-filed...more
I. SYNOPSIS- Ed was a vibrant and healthy 85-year-old. One day, he decided to sign an advance healthcare directive providing that if his physical condition ever declined, he wished to remain in his home as long as...more
One of the most common mistakes made by employers is the failure to properly calculate the regular rate when paying overtime compensation to employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The FLSA is a cornerstone of...more
The “regular rate of pay,” an often-misunderstood legal term of art, can be a thorn in the side of employers when calculating how to pay non-exempt hourly employees. These employees must be paid an overtime rate of at least...more
I read an interesting post by Frank Shuster of Constangy, Brooks, Smith on the thorny and often misunderstood issue of the “regular rate” and what that concept entails for compliance with the FLSA. Many employers,...more
In the past week, a class action lawsuit was filed against Anheuser-Busch, alleging various violations of California’s wage and hour laws. You may ask, “What’s newsworthy about that? Aren’t hundreds of such lawsuits filed...more
Reviving a security guard’s claim for overtime pay, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals recently reiterated that employers may not pay employees an artificially low regular rate of pay to avoid paying the proper amount of...more
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says it has taken its first-ever Clean Water Act (CWA) enforcement action against water pollution by so-called “forever chemicals” from a West Virginia chemical plant. On April...more
It’s hard to keep up with all the recent changes to labor and employment law. While the law always seems to evolve at a rapid pace, there have been an unprecedented number of changes for the past few years — and this past...more
I always tell clients it is not enough to “merely” comply with the Fair Labor Standards Act on wage-hour issues. I always tell them that they must comply with State law, which may (often) be stricter than the federal law and...more
Employers got a rare win in a regular rate case earlier this month. In Lemm v. Ecolab, Inc., the Second District cemented California’s adoption of the percentage of total earnings bonus exemption to the regular rate for...more
Employers in the hospitality industry have been through it all in recent years – from the devastation of the pandemic to ongoing labor shortages to an impending recession. These challenges and dramatic changes have surely...more
When the US Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division published a Final Rule on the regular rate in late 2019, it gave employers the freedom to more easily offer perks and benefits to their employees without running afoul...more
It is black letter FLSA canon that a promised bonus, such as a production bonus, or longevity bonus, must be included in the regular rate of employees who work overtime for the period of time covered by the bonus. This maxim...more
A Ninth Circuit panel recently ruled that Target Corp.’s pay practices comport with California law, and as such, Target’s motion for judgment on the pleadings should have been granted by the district court. See Bowen v....more