Vision Payroll

The US Department of Labor (DOL) recently issued Administrator signed Opinion Letter FLSA2009-24. 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). Because the letter was apparently never mailed after it was signed, the DOL under new Secretary Hilda L. Solis has decided to withdraw the letter for further consideration. Therefore, this letter may not be relied upon as a statement of agency policy. It is possible that a different conclusion may be reached when the Opinion Letter is reissued.

In this Opinion Letter, the DOL had opined that a proposed pay system complied with the fluctuating-workweek method of payment. Under the proposed method, the employer would calculate the regular rate of pay by dividing a non-exempt employee’s fixed salary by 40 hours, regardless of the number of hours actually worked in that week, and using that rate to determine any overtime premium or double-time premium to be paid.

State laws may provide rules that are more beneficial to the employee and must be followed. The DOL may come to a different conclusion when it reissues the Opinion Letter after further consideration. Contact Vision Payroll if you have questions about this Opinion Letter.

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.

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 FLSA2009-16. 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.

The US Department of Labor (DOL) recently issued Administrator signed Opinion Letter FLSA2009-14. 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 ruled that reducing a salaried employee’s pay due to a reduction in hours mandated by the employer may violate the salary basis requirement and jeopardize the employee’s exempt status.

In certain cases in which there is a low patient census, the employer offers voluntary time off (VTO). VTO allows the employees to take time off and “use paid annual, personal, or vacation leave, but continue to accrue employment benefits.” An insufficient number of volunteers under this system results in the implementation of an MTO (mandatory time off) system. Employees may then use accrued leave or take unpaid MTO. If an employee does not have sufficient time to allow payment under the leave policy or elects not to use accrued leave the employer deducts the VTO or MTO from the employee’s salary for that week. If the leave lasts the entire week, no salary is paid.

Under the FLSA, deductions from salary are not allowed when work is not available if the salaried employee “is ready, willing and able to work.” A reduction may be allowed “if it is a bona fide reduction not designed to circumvent the salary basis requirement, and does not bring the salary below the applicable minimum salary” (currently $455 per week). Deductions are allowed when exempt employees “voluntarily take time off for personal reasons, other than sickness or disability, for one or more full days.” The employee must truly volunteer, however, and it must not be “occasioned by the employer or the operating requirements of the business.”

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 FLSA 2009-11. 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 a concessionaire at a privately-owned recreational establishment did not qualify as a recreational establishment. A recreational establishment is an “establishment that is an amusement or recreational establishment, organized camp, or religious or  non-profit educational conference center that either ‘does not operate for more than seven months in any calendar year,’ or, ‘during the preceding calendar year,’ has ‘average receipts for any six months of such year [of] not more than 33 1/3 per centum of its average receipts for the other six months of such year.’” Although a restaurant may qualify as a recreational establishment if the host establishment qualifies and the acts with the concessionaire as a single establishment, in this case the entities were separate and distinct.

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 FLSA2009-10. 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). Because the letter was apparently never mailed after it was signed, the DOL under new Secretary Hilda L. Solis has decided to withdraw the letter for further consideration. Therefore, this letter may not be relied upon as a statement of agency policy. It is possible that a different conclusion may be reached when the Opinion Letter is reissued.

In this Opinion Letter, the DOL confirmed that community members who coach athletic teams qualify as teachers under the FLSA. Although a teaching certificate indicates that an employee qualifies for the exemption, there is no requirement that a teacher possess a certificate to qualify. Further, “there is no minimum education or academic degree required” for the exemption. Coaches qualify as teachers if their primary duty is “teaching and imparting knowledge to students in an educational establishment.” Since these community members apparently do not provide other services to the school district and there is no salary requirement for teachers under the FLSA, the coaches qualify and are exempt from minimum wage and overtime requirements.

State laws may provide rules that are more beneficial to the employee and must be followed. The DOL may come to a different conclusion when it reissues the Opinion Letter after further consideration. Contact Vision Payroll if you have questions about this Opinion Letter.