Obama Administration’s Overtime Rule Invalidated

A federal judge from Texas struck down the Obama administration’s overtime rule, finding the salary-level test set forth by the Department of Labor did not account for an analysis of an employee’s job duties for purposes of determining whether an employee is exempt from overtime pay.  A copy of the court's opinion is available here. More ›

Uncle Sam Wants You . . . To Tell Him a Little About Overtime

A Department of Labor (DOL) 2016 Final Rule pushed federal regulations under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) that would have more than doubled the “threshold” below which nearly every salaried employee would be entitled to overtime. In November 2016, a federal district court prevented the new threshold from coming into effect, and the subsequent election of President Trump called into doubt whether revised rules would ever be implemented. More ›

Local Services Providers Receive Clarification of Enterprise Coverage Under the FLSA

Earlier this week, the Eleventh Circuit issued rare guidance to local service providers as to which employees must be paid overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). In doing so, the Court clarified the distinction between "goods" and "materials" for purposes of the ultimate consumer exception to FLSA enterprise coverage. More ›

Overtime Expansion Over? Texas District Court issues Nationwide Injunction of Expanded Federal Overtime Rules

What Happened?

A federal judge has blocked the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) from implementing new regulations under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) that expand overtime eligibility to 4.2 million salaried workers. The preliminary injunction issued yesterday found that the expanded overtime eligibility rules were contrary to the FLSA and Congressional intent.

The rules were supposed to become effective December 1, 2016. They grant overtime eligibility to millions of salaried white-collar employees whose salaries were not above a threshold of $921 per week ($47,892 annually), but whose duties otherwise would have made them exempt from overtime. With the injunction, the new regulations are on hold until the court issues a final decision. More ›

Peering into Hinshaw’s Crystal Ball: How the Trump Administration May Affect Labor and Employment Landscape

With the election of Donald Trump and transition to a Republican administration looming, employers are scrambling to predict what impact Trump will have on labor and employment policy and enforcement initiatives. What employers can expect in the first 12 months of a Trump Administration is unclear, but there likely will be change in the following areas: More ›

Seventh Circuit Upholds Tip Credit Pay for Related, Non-Tipped Duties

As those in the restaurant industry know well, federal and state law allow employers to pay tipped employees less than the required minimum wage with the expectation they will receive enough tips to make up the difference. This is referred to as a "tip credit." There has long been a battle within wage and hour suits over whether and when an employee paid under the tip-credit can still be paid the below minimum wage rate while performing "side-work" or non-serving duties that do not directly result in tips from customers. In a decision issued on July 15, 2016, the Seventh Circuit helped clarify the line, finding that an employer did not violate wage laws by paying its servers under the tip credit for side work those servers performed. More ›

Overtime Exemptions Shrink

The hour has arrived. Last summer, the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor announced substantial revisions to federal regulations delineating who is exempt from overtime pay. After almost a year of waiting (and over 290,000 comments to the draft rule), the DOL announced this week that it will be publishing the final form of its revised overtime regulations under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). This final publication will occur on Monday, May 23, 2016, but the pre-publication version is publicly available now. More ›

Ninth Circuit Holds that DOL may Expand Regulation of Employers’ Tip Pooling Practices

The restaurant and gaming industry lost a battle in the Ninth Circuit over whether employers that pay their workers at least the minimum wage are subject to Department of Labor regulations restricting tip pooling arrangements. More ›

President Obama Proposes to Expand Overtime to over five Million Salaried Workers

On June 29, 2015, President Obama unveiled a dramatic change to the country's overtime pay law in an opinion piece published by the Huffington Post. The president's proposal seeks to extend overtime protection to nearly 5 million employees by raising the minimum threshold for guaranteed overtime pay from an annual salary of $23,660 to $50,440. Employees falling within the expansion would be guaranteed time-and-a-half for all hours worked over 40 hours in a week; in other words, if the rule takes effect as intended, the President will in one fell swoop have reverted a massive subsection of middle-income workers from exempt to non-exempt status, thereby entitling them to overtime pay. Further, going forward, the rule would link the minimum exemption salary to inflation levels, with the goal of avoiding another severe adjustment such as this in the future. More ›