Workforce Bulletin

As featured in #WorkforceWednesday®: This week, we’re looking at recent state-level changes and legal trends that have varying degrees of impact on employers.

With limited exceptions, California law does not require employers to provide employees with a premium rate of pay for working during holidays or paid days off for holidays unless contractually obligated to do so. However, many employers chose to do so for a variety of reasons. For employers that choose to provide holiday benefits, your “presents” is requested for this read.  

Why offer holiday pay?

Many employers voluntarily elect to offer holiday benefits. Some common reasons for doing so are:

• Boosting employee morale;
• Increasing company loyalty;
• Making an employment offer ...

Effective December 31, 2018, New York State’s salary basis threshold for exempt executive and administrative employees[1] will increase again, as a part of amendments to the minimum wage orders put in place in 2016.[2] Employers must increase the salaries of employees classified as exempt under the executive and administrative exemptions by the end of the year to maintain these exemptions.

The increases to New York’s salary basis threshold for the executive and administrative exemptions will take effect as follows:

Employers in New York City 

• Large employers (11 or ...

Our colleague Brian W. Steinbach at Epstein Becker Green has a post on the Wage & Hour Defense Blog that will be of interest to our readers in the hospitality industry: “Proposed D.C. Council Legislation Puts Voter-Approved Elimination of Tip Credit Into Question.”

In our June 28, 2018 post on District of Columbia voters approving Initiative 77, which would incrementally increase the minimum cash wage for tipped workers to $15.00 per hour by July 1, 2025, and effectively eliminate the tip credit staring July 1, 2026, we noted the possibility of action by the D.C. Council to ...

We have written more than a few times here about the new Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) overtime rules that were scheduled to go into effect on December 1, 2016, dramatically increasing the salary threshold for white collar exemptions.

Most recently, we wrote about the November 22, 2016 nationwide injunction entered by a federal judge in Texas, enjoining the Department of Labor (“DOL”) from enforcing those new rules on the grounds that the DOL had overstepped its bounds.

The injunction threw the new rules into a state of limbo, as employers and employees alike were left to ...

We have written often in the past several months about the new FLSA overtime rules that were scheduled to go into effect in little more than a week, dramatically increasing the salary thresholds for "white collar" exemptions and also providing for automatic increases for those thresholds.

In our most recent piece about the important decisions employers had to make by the effective date of December 1, 2016, careful readers noticed a couple of peculiar words -- "barring ... a last-minute injunction."

On November 22, 2016, a federal judge in the Eastern District of Texas entered just such ...

Our colleague Michael S. Kun, national Chairperson of the Wage and Hour practice group at Epstein Becker Green, has a post on the Wage & Hour Defense Blog that will be of interest to many of our readers: “Stop! Texas Federal Court Enjoins New FLSA Overtime Rules."

Following is an excerpt:

The injunction could leave employers in a state of limbo for weeks, months and perhaps longer as injunctions often do not resolve cases and, instead, lead to lengthy appeals. Here, though, the injunction could spell the quick death to the new rules should the Department choose not to appeal the ...

Our colleague Michael S. Kun, national Chairperson of the Wage and Hour practice group at Epstein Becker Green, has a post on the Wage & Hour Defense Blog that will be of interest to many of our readers in the technology industry: “Stop! Texas Federal Court Enjoins New FLSA Overtime Rules."

Following is an excerpt:

The injunction could leave employers in a state of limbo for weeks, months and perhaps longer as injunctions often do not resolve cases and, instead, lead to lengthy appeals. Here, though, the injunction could spell the quick death to the new rules should the Department ...

Our colleague Michael S. Kun, national Chairperson of the Wage and Hour practice group at Epstein Becker Green, has a post on the Wage & Hour Defense Blog that will be of interest to many of our readers in the financial services industry: “Stop! Texas Federal Court Enjoins New FLSA Overtime Rules."

Following is an excerpt:

The injunction could leave employers in a state of limbo for weeks, months and perhaps longer as injunctions often do not resolve cases and, instead, lead to lengthy appeals. Here, though, the injunction could spell the quick death to the new rules should the ...

Our colleague Michael S. Kun, national Chairperson of the Wage and Hour practice group at Epstein Becker Green, has a post on the Wage & Hour Defense Blog that will be of interest to many of our readers in the hospitality industry: “Stop! Texas Federal Court Enjoins New FLSA Overtime Rules."

Following is an excerpt:

The injunction could leave employers in a state of limbo for weeks, months and perhaps longer as injunctions often do not resolve cases and, instead, lead to lengthy appeals. Here, though, the injunction could spell the quick death to the new rules should the Department ...

Our colleague Michael S. Kun, national Chairperson of the Wage and Hour practice group at Epstein Becker Green, has a post on the Wage & Hour Defense Blog that will be of interest to many of our readers in the retail industry: “Stop! Texas Federal Court Enjoins New FLSA Overtime Rules."

Following is an excerpt:

The injunction could leave employers in a state of limbo for weeks, months and perhaps longer as injunctions often do not resolve cases and, instead, lead to lengthy appeals. Here, though, the injunction could spell the quick death to the new rules should the Department choose ...

The Administrator of the Wage Hour Division of U.S. Department of Labor has issued an Administrator’s Interpretation of the FLSA’s definition of “employ.” And the conclusion is one that not only could have a significant impact on the way companies do business, but lead to numerous class and collective actions alleging that workers have been misclassified as independent contractors.

Addressing the misclassification of employees as independent contractors, the Administrator’s Interpretation notes that the FLSA’s defines the term “employ” as “to suffer ...