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.

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 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.

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.

According to the US Department of Labor, in the week ending July 25, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 584,000, an increase of 25,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 559,000. The  4-week moving average was 559,000, a decrease of 8,250 from the previous week’s revised average of 567,250.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.7% for the week ending July 18, unchanged from the prior week’s unrevised rate of 4.7%.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending July 18 was 6,197,000, a decrease of 54,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 6,251,000. The 4-week moving average was 6,416,250, a decrease of 131,750 from the preceding week’s revised average of 6,548,000.

The fiscal year-to-date average for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment for all programs is 5.497 million.

The US Department of Labor (DOL) recently launched Disability.gov, the federal government’s Web site for people with disabilities, their family members, veterans, caregivers, employers and others. According to the DOL, the new site features comprehensive information about disability-related programs and services, as well as social media tools to better serve the more than fifty million Americans with disabilities.

Disability.gov’s social media tools encourage interaction and feedback from visitors, and offer new ways to organize, share and receive information. Visitors can sign up for personalized news and updates, participate in online discussions and suggest resources for the site. New features include a Twitter feed, RSS feeds, a blog and social bookmarking. Additional social media tools will be added to the site in the months ahead.

The new site includes user-friendly ways to get answers to important questions on finding employment, job accommodations and other topics. The site is organized into ten subject areas: benefits, civil rights, community life, education, emergency preparedness, employment, health, housing, technology and transportation. By selecting a category, visitors are directed to useful information on federal and state government programs and services, news and events, grants and funding opportunities and more.

Disability.gov, an effort led by the DOL’s Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP), contains thousands of links to reliable, trusted information from numerous federal agency partners, as well as educational institutions, non-profit organizations and state and local governments. It is an important resource not only for Americans with disabilities, but also for the parents of children with disabilities, employers, workforce and human resource professionals, veterans, military families, caregivers and many others.