Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
Segal, a partner in the Philadelphia office of Duane Morris LLP offered his tips at the SHRM Annual Conference and Exhibition, held recently in Atlanta. Wage and Hour Prior to 1938 we had a manufacturing economy, Segal says. In 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) was enacted. With the exception of minor interim adjustments, […]
Rubino, who is founder and president of Rubino Consulting Services in Pound Ridge, New York, offered his suggestions at the 64th SHRM Annual Conference and Exhibition, held recently in Atlanta, Georgia. Rubino asked his audience of HR managers how many of them had merit increase base salary systems. Most hands went up. Then he asked, […]
With the Supreme Court’s June 28 ruling affirming health reform, its legal requirements on employer health plans are a green light. Plans therefore continue to face important requirements this calendar year. Fortunately, they’re the same ones employers have known about for some time. But if an employer has been holding off from comprehensive implementation, a […]
When a worker is employed by two or more separate employers, this normally presents no special problems under the Fair Labor Standards Act. But even where the employee works for an entirely separate employer, there may still be a question of whether two employers are so entangled as to create a “joint employment” relationship where […]
Employers may not have to adjust their qualified transportation fringe benefit programs after all — at least not just yet. A legislative provision that would have affected QTFBs by boosting the mass transit exclusion to the same level as that for qualified parking — the so-called “mass transit parity” provision — did not make it […]
However, warns Evelyn Gentry, Faegre Baker Daniels LLP, there are downsides for employers that use unpaid interns, the most notable being potential violations of the FLSA. Misclassifying employees as unpaid interns, and thereby denying them federal minimum wage and overtime wages can result in costly litigation, civil fines, or both. Furthermore, employers who willfully violate […]
Exempt Employees and Disasters Exempt employees are generally paid their normal amount if the workday is shortened. Docking, or reducing pay of exempt employees who are scheduled to work, but who do not because of an emergency, may affect the employees’ status of being exempt from overtime, because, by docking, you are treating them like […]
If a company opens two hours late because of a snowstorm, should an employer pay employees who show up earlier because they didn’t hear the announcement? What time does the workday end when employees are given the option to go home because an incident such as a gas leak forces evacuation of the building? What […]
In a blow to a U.S. Department of Labor position, a divided Supreme Court ruled today that pharmaceutical sales representatives qualify for the “outside sales” exemption of the Fair Labor Standards Act. In an opinion delivered by Justice Samuel Alito, the Court found that under the most reasonable interpretation of DOL regulations, PSRs qualified as […]
By Nancy Williams Pharmaceutical representatives who persuade physicians to prescribe specific drugs don’t make any actual sales. They can’t because the products they promote can be sold legally only through a doctor’s prescription to an individual patient. Yet for years, it has been a common industry practice to categorize such employees as outside sales representatives […]