Question

FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT (FLSA)

In order for the FLSA to apply, there must be an employment relationship between the employer and employee! FACT: More than 130 million workers in more than 7 million workplaces are protected or covered by the FLSA, which is enforced by the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor.

Major Provisions

• Coverage – Employer & Employee

• Minimum Wage

• Overtime Pay

• Youth Employment

• Recordkeeping.

Covered Employers Under the FLSA; • Private sector employers with $500,000 or more in revenue, or 2 or more employees engaged in interstate commerce. • Hospitals and other health care institutions.• Public sector employers. • Schools. • Most non-profits. • Trade associations.

  FLSA NON-EXEMPT vs. EXEMPT;

- Non-Exempt. • Paid on an hourly basis • Paid for overtime based on law, policy or established guidelines under a collective bargaining agreement • Must take and record breaks and lunch periods • Must record all hours worked.

- Exempt; • Paid on a salary basis • Not paid by hours worked/daily hours are not recorded • Not legally required to take a lunch or break • All exempt employees are required to be paid on a salaried basis at a rate not less than $455 per week.

FLSA: WAGE BASICS (cont’d);

- On-Call Time? When an employee is on-call they are waiting to be called upon by their employer to perform an essential task, this is typically called “Waiting to be Engaged”. Depending on the company or employer’s on-call policy, the on-call conditions may vary. Some on-call conditions may require the employee to have a cell phone or other means of communication at all times. Other on-call conditions may prohibit the employee from drinking alcohol, or there may be a required response time when called upon. Some conditions may require the employee to remain on the employer’s premises. We refer to this as Non-restricted or Restricted Conditions.

- Non-Restricted Conditions; Non-restricted conditions enable the employee to use time effectively for their own personal use while on-call. This is considered non-restricted conditions. In most cases, non-restricted conditions is time an employee can use effectively for their own purposes and therefore is not considered hours worked -Restricted Conditions; Restricted conditions restricts the employee from effectively using the time for personal use. The on-call time could be considered hours worked.

- Meal & Rest Periods • Are not hours worked when the employee is relieved of duties for the purpose of eating a meal • The FLSA allows employers to automatically deduct 30 minutes from compensable time for meal breaks for hourly employees, provided those employees are permitted a meal break that is free from all job duties.

FLSA: MINIMUM WAGE BASICS (cont’d);

- Training Time; Time employee spends in meetings, lectures or training is considered hours worked and must be paid, unless: • Attendance is outside the regular working hours • Attendance is voluntary, the course, lecture or meeting is not job related Employee does not perform any product work during attendance.

- Travel Time • Ordinary home to work travel is not work time • Travel between job sites • Travel time spent in the air going to a different state or country

*Sugar Rush Inc case study:

As we are aware 10 Sugar rush inc employees from the California office have alerted the HR Department about not being paid overtime when in fact their time cards reflect hours that should be considered overtime. • The issue is that the West Coast Operations Manager, Sheila Spata, writes on the bottom of their time cards “NO O.T.”. Apparently the HR Department has not paid it for the past month. There was a directive sent to Sheila by Lori Sweet to reduce overtime. The employees work in the shipping department and are all non-exempt.

Question: What laws should we be concerned with? Please give a brief description of the law and why there is a possible concern. What needs to be done to correct the matter

Answer 1

The given case can be seen as a case involving the FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT (FLSA). FLSA is the federal law that is mainly related to the minimum wage, recordkeeping, youth employment standards and overtime pay in both the government sector and private sector. FLSA provides the guidelines about the overtime paid to the exempted and non exempted employees.

As in the given case, the time cards of the employee clearly show that the employees have worked overtime but despite that, they are not paid. Here it is also provided that the employee is non exempted employees so they have the right to ask the payment for the overtime done by them.

As these employees were not paid overtime and in fat NO OT. is mentioned on their time cards, it is a clear violation of FLSA guidelines.  As the case indicates a clear violation of FLSA guidelines, the employees first of all request the HR department for the payment of their dues and even then if they do not receive the payment of overtime they have the option of taking legal action in which they can write to the office of the Wage and Hour Division (WHD) of the Department of Labor for the further actions.

On the part of the employer, in order to avoid any sort of legal action, the organization has to pay for the overtime done by the employees and then they can slowly remove the overtime and can operate under normal working hours