By: Scott Hecker and Kevin Young
Gone are the days when the U.S. DOL’s Wage & Hour Division (“WHD”) invited employers to proactively identify and collaborate with the Division to fix their wage and hour missteps. Closed is the chapter in which employers could expect WHD to stand down on the threat of double damages outside of egregious cases. After
Continue Reading Preparing for WHD’s Less-Carrot-More-Stick Enforcement Approach
By: Amanda Mazin and David D. Kadue
Seyfarth Synopsis: The Ninth Circuit has held that a weekly per diem benefit paid by a healthcare staffing agency to its traveling clinicians is a wage that increases the employee’s regular rate used to calculate overtime pay. Clarke v. AMN Services, LLC.
Facts
Plaintiffs worked as traveling clinicians for a healthcare staffing company.
Continue Reading Certain Per Diem Payments Increase The FLSA Regular Rate
By: Tim Watson, Brian Wadsworth, and John Phillips
Seyfarth Synopsis: In an important decision for employers, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the all-too lenient but commonly accepted Lusardi standard for conditional certification under the FLSA. In its place, the court adopted a more practical, common sense approach in deciding whether trial courts should send notice to
Continue Reading No More Two-Step in Texas (and Beyond): the Fifth Circuit Rejects the Two-Stage Lusardi Approach to Conditional Certification in Favor of Employer-Friendly Standard
By Ariel Fenster and Kevin Young
Seyfarth Synopsis. In the final hours of 2020, the U.S. DOL’s Wage & Hour Division issued an opinion letter containing guidance on the compensability of time commuting to the office, or tending to personal matters, for employees primarily working from home. While fact-specific, the letter offers a glimpse into WHD’s current thinking on increasingly
Continue Reading New Year’s Gift From WHD: Guidance on Continuous Workday Rule in the WFH Era
By: Brian A. Wadsworth and Andrew L. Scroggins
As COVID-19 cases surge again in the United States, state and local governments continue to recommend or require remote work arrangements, and some employers have already announced plans to permit remote work to continue well into 2021 and even beyond.
Remote work is not new, and many of its challenges such as
Continue Reading As COVID-Driven Remote Work Arrangements Continue, Wage and Hour Compliance Challenges Grow
By: Andrew McKinley and Louisa Johnson
Seyfarth Synopsis: The U.S. DOL has confirmed that there is no per se violation of the FLSA’s minimum wage requirement when low-wage employees are reimbursed for their use of a personal vehicle at a reasonable rate that is less than the IRS standard mileage rate and clarified that, in many cases, not all vehicle-related
Continue Reading Reasonable, Not Required: DOL Says IRS Mileage Rate Is Not Only Expense Reimbursement Method
By: Catherine M. Dacre and Christina Jaremus
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division earlier this week published additional employer guidance regarding compliance with the FLSA during the COVID-19 pandemic (“Guidance”). The Guidance is a helpful aide in understanding general wage and hour principles during the crisis. But it leaves some questions with respect to more
Continue Reading Thank You, Next Guidance Please — Everything You Need to Know About the Wage and Hour Division’s Latest Guidance on COVID-19 and the FLSA
By: Michael Steinberg, Hillary Massey, and Barry Miller
Seyfarth Synopsis: Two recent Department of Labor Opinion Letters addressing the FLSA’s outside sales exemption provide helpful guidance and flexibility to employers with unique business models.
In contrast to some of the FLSA’s more byzantine exemptions, the outside sales exemption (“OSE”) is a surprisingly simple test, with just two parts:
Continue Reading Retail on Wheels & Selling in Someone Else’s Store: DOL Clarifies Application of the Outside Sales Exemption in Unique Settings
By: Ala Salameh
Employees under heightened demands to care for their health and families are using time off and sick leave in record numbers. This has left many employers, particularly those qualified as “essential businesses,” short-staffed in a phase of critical need. To fill the void, employers are contemplating a temporary reshuffle of work assignments including posting exempt employees to
Continue Reading It Is A Global Pandemic, But Is It An FLSA Emergency?
By: Nolan R. Theurer, Ryan McCoy, and Kyle Petersen
Seyfarth Synopsis: Effective April 8, 2020, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (“FMCSA”) extended an emergency rule suspending “Hours of Service” rules that generally limit the number of hours certain truck drivers can stay on the road. This marks the first time that the Hours of Service rules, in
Continue Reading Federal Government Suspends Long-Haul Truckers’ Hours of Service Rules To Help Cope With COVID-19 Pandemic