For much of 2016, employers and HR professionals were focused on preparing for the new Fair Labor Standards Act white-collar overtime exemption regulations. The Department of Labor issued the final regulations on May 18, 2016, with an effective date of December 1, 2016.
As you may remember, the new regulations more than doubled the minimum…
In a surprising 11th-hour move, late Tuesday, November 22, 2016, a Texas federal court issued a nationwide preliminary injunction blocking the U.S. Department of Labor’s new Fair Labor Standards Act “white-collar” overtime exemption regulations from taking effect on December 1, 2016.
U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant, who was appointed to the federal bench in 2014…
We have been following litigation in Pennsylvania challenging the use of payroll debit cards by employers to pay employees. In one such case, the Pennsylvania Superior Court recently ruled that an employer violated the Pennsylvania Wage Payment and Collection Law (WPCL) by requiring employees to accept their wages on a payroll debit card, rather than…
As regular readers of our blog know, we have been following a pending class action lawsuit challenging a Pennsylvania employer’s use of payroll debit cards to pay its employees. There has been a key development in that case. The Pennsylvania Superior Court has issued a decision that affirmed that the employer at issue violated the…
In a recent decision, the Third Circuit emphasized the need for employers to capture and compensate all hours worked by non-exempt employees, even if the employer pays the employees for break time that it could treat as non-compensable under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
The calendar (if not the weather) tells us that fall is almost here. With the change in seasons comes another reminder that the effective date of the U.S. Department of Labor’s new Fair Labor Standards Act “white-collar” overtime exemption regulations is fast approaching.
Effective December 1, new rules that more than double the minimum…
On April 17, 2016, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf signed the Medical Marijuana Act (MMA), which legalizes medicinal marijuana in Pennsylvania. The MMA, which takes effect on May 17, 2016, includes various provisions related to employment, and we have received many questions regarding what employers must, can and cannot do as a result of the new…
For what seems like an eternity, we have been waiting for the U.S. Department of Labor to issue the new Fair Labor Standards Act “white-collar” overtime exemption regulations. While many have speculated on when the final regulations would be issued, most assumed that the DOL would wait until the summer or fall of 2016 to…
A recent federal court decision in Pennsylvania affirmed the risks incurred by employers if they treat brief rest breaks as unpaid for non-exempt employees. In Perez v. American Future Systems, Inc. d/b/a Progressive Business Publications, the U.S. Department of Labor filed suit against the employer, a Pennsylvania publishing company, and its principal owner under…
Whether meal breaks count as compensable hours worked for non-exempt employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act can be a thorny issue for employers. The FLSA regulations provide that meal periods during which an employee is “completely relieved of duty for the purpose of eating regular meals” do not count as hours worked. 29 C.F.R.…
