Vision Payroll

The US Department of Labor (DOL) recently issued Administrator signed Opinion Letter FLSA2009-18. Although Opinion Letters only apply to the exact set of facts and circumstances presented in each case, they are a valuable aid in understanding current interpretations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

In this Opinion Letter, the DOL addressed two questions regarding an employer’s accrued paid time-off (PTO) plan.

Are exempt employees who are required to take PTO during periods of “low patient census” in danger of losing their exempt status?

If an exempt employee’s accrued PTO is exhausted and the periods of low patient census continues, could [the employer] schedule the exempt employee for less than forty hours and reduce pay accordingly?

In response to the first question, the DOL stated “[a]n employee will not be considered to be paid “on a salary basis,” however, if any deductions from the salary are made for full or partial day absences occasioned by the employer or by the operating requirements of the business.” Therefore, those employees could lose their exempt status if such deductions are made.

As for the second question, the DOL concluded, [u]nlike a salary reduction that reflects reduction in the normal scheduled workweek and is not designed to circumvent the salary basis, deductions from salary due to day-to-day or week-to-week determinations of the operating requirements of the business are precisely the circumstances the salary basis test is intended to preclude. Such a plan is, therefore, inconsistent with the guaranteed salary basis of payment required by the regulations.”

State laws may provide rules that are more beneficial to the employee and must be followed. Contact Vision Payroll if you have questions about this Opinion Letter.

The US Department of Labor (DOL) recently issued Administrator signed Opinion Letter FLSA2009-17. Although Opinion Letters only apply to the exact set of facts and circumstances presented in each case, they are a valuable aid in understanding current interpretations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

In this Opinion Letter, the DOL explained how the FLSA applies to certain on-call employees of a Special Services District (District). The guidelines are:

• Employees are on-call after normal working hours. On-call hours are assigned on a rotating basis for a one-week period. Employees are on-call approximately every eight weeks, and they may switch schedules with other employees.
• The District provides the on-call employee a mobile telephone and a vehicle with necessary tools, should they need to respond to an emergency.
• Employees are not restricted to any location while on-call, but are expected to respond within 45 to 60 minutes of receiving an emergency call.

Travel time to the emergency locations generally runs 5-20 minutes, there are 2-5 emergency calls per month, on-call employees generally do not receive more than one call per night, and the average work time at a location is 5-10 minutes.

The DOL reached the following conclusions:

1. The on-call employees need not be compensated for on-call time since the requirements are not so restrictive as to require compensation.
2. Time spent working after responding to a call is time that employees must be paid for.
3. If the employee “travels a substantial distance to an emergency site, the employee must be paid for that time. The Wage and Hour Division (WHD), however, does not take a position as to whether such travel to a regular work site is compensable. Therefore, from a WHD enforcement perspective such time is not treated as compensable.

State laws may provide rules that are more beneficial to the employee and must be followed. Contact Vision Payroll if you have questions about this Opinion Letter.

The US Department of Labor (DOL) recently issued Administrator signed Opinion Letter FLSA2009-16. Although Opinion Letters only apply to the exact set of facts and circumstances presented in each case, they are a valuable aid in understanding current interpretations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

In this Opinion Letter, the DOL said that a time-keeping system was in compliance with the FLSA. The DOL explained the system as follows:

[E]mployees work nine hours per day Monday through Thursday and work eight hours on one of the two Fridays during the two-week period. The company is proposing changes to the corporate policy and to the time-keeping system to ensure compliance with the FLSA. The new policy will require employees to choose their desired workweek schedule from a list of employer-established, standard workweek schedules. The employees may choose a schedule that begins at 11:31 a.m. Friday and ends at 11:30 a.m. the following Friday, with the scheduled workday starting at 7:30 a.m. Alternately, the employee may choose a schedule that starts at 12:31 p.m. Friday and ends at 12:30 p.m. the following Friday. The workday starts at 8:30 a.m. Once approved, the selected workweek will appear on the employee’s time card. Time cards will have two separate columns for reporting time on Friday – one column for hours worked during the first workweek and another column for hours worked during the second workweek. Employees will continue to be paid time and one half for all hours worked over forty in any workweek.

Since the “workweeks are fixed, consist of 168-hour periods, and employees will be paid for any hours they work over forty in that specified period” the proposed system is in compliance with the FLSA.

State laws may provide rules that are more beneficial to the employee and must be followed. Contact Vision Payroll if you have questions about this Opinion Letter.

Nonfarm payroll employment continued to decline in July (-247,000), and the unemployment rate was little changed at 9.4%, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported recently. The average monthly job loss for May through July (-331,000) was about half the average decline for November through April (-645,000). In July, job losses continued in many of the major industry sectors.

In July, the number of unemployed persons was 14.5 million. The unemployment rate was 9.4%, little changed for the second consecutive month.

Among the major worker groups, unemployment rates for adult men (9.8%), adult women (7.5%), teenagers (23.8%), whites (8.6%), blacks (14.5%), and Hispanics (12.3%) were little changed in July. The unemployment rate for Asians was 8.3%, not seasonally adjusted.

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) rose by 584,000 over the month to 5.0 million. In July, 1 in 3 unemployed persons were jobless for 27 weeks or more.

The civilian labor force participation rate declined by 0.2 percentage points in July to 65.5 percent. The employment-population ratio, at 59.4%, was little changed over the month but has declined by 3.3 percentage points since the recession began in December 2007.

The number of persons working part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) was little changed in July at 8.8 million. The number of such workers rose sharply in the fall and winter but has been little changed for 4 consecutive months.

About 2.3 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force in July, 709,000 more than a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals, who were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.

Among the marginally attached, there were 796,000 discouraged workers in July, up by 335,000 over the past 12 months. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them. The other 1.5 million persons marginally attached to the labor force in July had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey for reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities.

This week’s question comes from Daniel, a business owner. I travel frequently and don’t always makes it to the office. I need to transfer money to my payroll account and need the payroll reports to calculate the amount. Can I receive my payroll reports by e-mail? Answer: Vision Payroll can send you an e-mail as soon as your payroll is processed with an encrypted attachment. The attachment contains copies of your payroll reports and pay stubs for the current payroll. Using proprietary software provided by Vision Payroll, you’ll be able to view and print any or all of the reports or stubs. Contact Vision Payroll today to get started.

According to the US Department of Labor, in the week ending August 1, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 550,000, a decrease of 38,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 588,000. The  4-week moving average was 555,250, a decrease of 4,750 from the previous week’s revised average of 560,000.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.7% for the week ending July 25, unchanged from the prior week’s unrevised rate of 4.7%.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending July 25 was 6,310,000, an increase of 69,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 6,241,000. The 4-week moving average was 6,278,750, a decrease of 148,500 from the preceding week’s revised average of 6,427,250.

The fiscal year-to-date average for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment for all programs is 5.522 million.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in IR-2009-071 reminded consumers to be aware of identity theft scams that spoof the IRS name, logo, or Web site. The scammers may use e-mail, fax, or telephone for their schemes. The goal is obtaining personal or financial information such name, address, birth date, bank account numbers, credit card numbers, social security numbers (SSNs), PINs, and passwords.

Some of the more common scams revolve around the following:

• Making Work Pay Refund
• Inherited Funds/Lottery Winnings/Cash Consignment
• Form W-8BEN
• Refund Scam

The IRS recommends knowing the following warning signs of a scam:

• Requests detailed or an unusual amount of personal and/or financial information, such as name, SSN, bank or credit card account numbers or security-related information, such as mother’s maiden name, either in the e-mail itself or on another site to which a link in the e-mail sends the recipient.
• Dangles bait to get the recipient to respond to the e-mail, such as mentioning a tax refund or offering to pay the recipient to participate in an IRS survey.
• Threatens a consequence for not responding to the e-mail, such as additional taxes or blocking access to the recipient’s funds.
• Gets the IRS or other federal agency names wrong.
• Uses incorrect grammar or odd phrasing (many of the e-mail scams originate overseas and are written by non-native English speakers).
• Uses a really long address in any link contained in the e-mail message or one that does not start with the actual IRS Web site address (http://www.irs.gov/). To see the actual link address, or url, move the mouse over the link included in the text of the e-mail.

If you are suspicious of any item you receive purporting to be from the IRS, remember that the IRS will never ask for personal or financial information in an e-mail and it does not send unsolicited e-mails. Never click on links or open attachments in such e-mails and contact the IRS at (800) 829-1040 if you receive one.

The US Department of Labor (DOL) has announced that QuikTrip Corp. (QuikTrip) will pay $747,729 in overtime back wages for violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The 3,819 current and former employees affected will receive an average of $196 each.

In announcing the settlement Secretary of Labor Hilda L Solis said, “I am pleased that this case has resulted in almost $750,000 in back wages being paid to thousands of workers across nine states. I am committed to ensuring that every worker is paid the full wages he or she is due, and that those who work overtime receive the compensation to which they are legally entitled.”

Non-exempt employees must be paid overtime at one and one-half times their regular rate of pay. QuikTrip erred by failing to include the amount of non-discretionary bonuses when calculating the regular rate of pay to be used in the overtime premium calculation to employees in Arizona, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas.

Vision Payroll strongly recommends consulting a qualified labor law attorney to ensure that overtime pay is properly calculated.

The US Department of Labor (DOL) has announced a settlement of a lawsuit it filed against Partners HealthCare Systems, Inc. (Partners) and its affiliates alleging violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

According to George Rioux, director of the Boston District Office of the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD), “The problem was that employees were working for more than one Partners-affiliated hospital or health care facility during a single workweek, but their hours worked during those workweeks were not being combined to determine if overtime was due.”

Management of Partners became aware of the problem and contacted the WHD, which followed with an investigation. The total back wages to be paid for the period from January 1, 2007 to March 21, 2009 is $2,756,514.

The consent judgment was agreed to by both parties. In addition to Partners, the defendants were The Brigham and Women’s Hospital Inc., Faulkner Hospital Inc., The General Hospital Corp. (Massachusetts General Hospital), The McLean Hospital Corp., North Shore Medical Center Inc., North Shore Physicians Group Inc., Newton-Wellesley Hospital, The Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital Corp., Rehabilitation Hospital of the Cape and Islands, Shaughnessy-Kaplan Rehabilitation Hospital Inc., Partners Home Care Inc., Partners Private Care Inc., FRC Inc. and Partners Community Healthcare Inc.

Vision Payroll strongly recommends consulting a qualified labor law attorney to ensure that overtime pay is properly calculated.

The US Department of Labor (DOL) recently issued Administrator signed Opinion Letter FLSA2009-15. Although Opinion Letters only apply to the exact set of facts and circumstances presented in each case, they are a valuable aid in understanding current interpretations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

In this Opinion Letter, the DOL confirmed that time spent studying for city-required training programs, seminars, and classes is compensable under the FLSA, but the time spent studying may be limited by the city. Regardless, all time spent studying is compensable even if it exceeds the limits set.

The city in question requires employees to attend and pass certain training programs designed to assist the employees in their jobs. Although the training is during normal working hours, “homework” is often assigned by the instructor. The homework is generally reading or studying certain material in preparation for future classroom discussion.

There are four criteria to determine if training programs and similar activities should be treated as compensable time:

1. Attendance is outside of the employee’s regular working hours;
2. Attendance is in fact voluntary;
3. The course, lecture, or meeting is not directly related to the employee’s job; and
4. The employee does not perform any productive work during such attendance.

Since criteria 1. ,2., and 3. are not met, the time spent by the employees in class must be compensated.

Homework required as part of a compensable training program is also itself compensable. The city may set a realistic limit on the time that employees spend studying. It is the responsibility of the city to see that such limits are not exceeded, but any time spent over the limit is still compensable. Alternatively, the city could allow employees time during their normal work day to complete any homework.

State laws may provide rules that are more beneficial to the employee and must be followed. Contact Vision Payroll if you have questions about this Opinion Letter.