Wage and Hour Defense Blog

Neither fish nor fowl
Salaried with overtime
Brings pain and regret

We don’t see a lot of wage and hour poetry these days, but if we did, it would probably look a bit like the foregoing example from an anonymous former U.S. Department of Labor official.  When it comes to paying office workers who do not qualify for an overtime exemption, businesses often look for ways to treat those workers as much like exempt personnel as possible, including by paying wages in the form of a salary rather than hourly pay.  Salaried nonexempt status ordinarily starts with good motives, but it frequently ends with claims for unpaid overtime.  In this month’s Time Is Money segment, we explain that although paying overtime-eligible employees on a salary basis is a lawful, available option, it comes with significant risks that an employer must understand and navigate in order to pay these workers correctly.

For the second time this week, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (“WHD”) has issued a Final Rule involving the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (the “FLSA”).  Following closely on the heels of the revisions to the section 7(i) exemption regulations discussed here, on May 20, 2020 WHD released its revisions to the regulations regarding the “fluctuating workweek” method of paying overtime to salaried non-exempt employees.  And, as with the 7(i) Final Rule, the fluctuating workweek Final Rule eliminates confusion caused by WHD’s ...

As part of its spring 2019 regulatory agenda, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (“WHD”) will consider a proposed revision to the Fair Labor Standard Act’s (“FLSA”) regulations on calculating overtime pay for workers whose hours fluctuate from week to week.

Generally, non-exempt employees covered by the FLSA must receive overtime pay for hours worked in excess of 40 in a workweek at a rate at least time and one-half their regular rates of pay – the standard calculation of overtime.  However, the FLSA provides an alternative method of calculating ...