Vision Payroll

The US Department of Labor (DOL) recently issued Administrator signed Opinion Letter FLSA2009-21. 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 stated that a company’s nondiscretionary safety bonus complies with the overtime requirements of the FLSA. Employees who meet certain requirements during a specified period receive a set amount for each regular hour worked. Employees who worked overtime during that period will receive one and one-half times the set amount for each overtime hour worked. “The bonus is applied uniformly across all hours worked, and an additional one-half times the bonus rate is paid for all overtime hours” so the plan complies 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.

This week’s question comes from Ryan, a small-business owner. We’re going to be closed next Monday for Labor Day. We have some full-time employees and some part-time employees. Do I have to pay employees for holidays? Answer: There is no requirement in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) for employers to pay employees for holidays not worked or to pay them a higher rate if they do work. Most employers do pay holiday pay to their full-time employees. Among part-time employees, some employers pay a full day’s pay, some pay according to the employee’s work schedule or other allocation method, and some do not pay part-time employees for holidays. Most public sector and union employees have holiday pay negotiated into their contracts.

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

The US Department of Labor (DOL) recently issued Administrator signed Opinion Letter FLSA2009-20. 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 stated that non-profit organizations could be subject to enterprise coverage under the FLSA. In those situations in which the leasing company and the non-profit organization are determined to be a single enterprise, an otherwise exempt non-profit institution could be subject to the FLSA. The leasing company’s status as a covered enterprise under the FLSA could jeopardize the non-profit’s exempt status under the FLSA. Although organizations which have received an Opinion Letter from the DOL might be able to be assured that their status has not been jeopardized, other non-profit organizations should consider if any perceived benefits of using an employee leasing organization are worth the substantial risk of losing their exempt status under 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.

How does the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) apply to travel time? How is weekend time handled if it combines business time and personal time? Must employees be paid for commuting if it’s done in company-owned vehicles?

Learn the answers to these questions and much more in this month’s HRCast, a recording provided by our team of HR Pros and available exclusively on MyHRSupportCenter. You’ll learn more about the rules covering these four types of travel:

1. Portal-to-portal travel
2. Travel between work sites in a single day
3. Special one-day assignments
4. Overnight travel

Mistakes made in this area can be costly and employers must be familiar with the rules to ensure proper treatment.

Visit MyHRSupportCenter regularly not only for our HRCasts, but also to get late-breaking compliance alerts, best practices to implement, and HR tools to use every day. If you’re not yet signed up or would like a free trial of MyHRSupportCenter, contact Vision Payroll today.

The US Department of Labor (DOL) recently issued Administrator signed Opinion Letter FLSA2009-19. 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 concluded that fire protection employees of a Transportation Authority, “a public benefit corporation created by, and organized under, state law”, qualified as employees in fire protection activities. As such, the FLSA provides a partial overtime pay exemption. Fire protection employees have a “maximum hour standard” that must be met before overtime is required. The standard runs from fifty-three hours in a seven-day work period to 212 hours in a twenty-eight day period.

Furthermore, buybacks of vacation time may be excluded from the regular rate of pay when calculating overtime pay, but stipends for quarterly perfect attendance must be included in the regular rate of pay.

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 FLSA2009-18. 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.

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.