In Texas, an employer can satisfy its overtime obligation to nonexempt employees whose hours fluctuate from week-to-week and are paid on a salary basis, by using the fluctuating workweek (FWW) method of overtime compensation. Under the FWW, a nonexempt employee who has hours of work which fluctuate from week to week may be paid a
Wage & Hour
Fifth Circuit Holds Nonemployee Lacks Claim but Employee Can Recover Emotional Distress Damages in FLSA Retaliation Suit
The Fifth Circuit recently held that a plaintiff-employee in an FLSA retaliation claim can recover damages for emotional distress but that the statute does not provide a retaliation cause of action for a nonemployee spouse. In Pineda v. JTCH Apartments, LLC, an employee of the apartment complex who did maintenance work around the property…
EEOC to Target Companies Using Non-traditional Working Relationships
Yesterday, the EEOC published its four-year Strategic Enforcement Plan for fiscal years 2017 through 2021. The Plan is the Commission’s list of areas of priority where it intends to focus its resources in the next four years. The purpose of the Plan is to identify those areas the Commission believes are likely to have a…
Use the New Overtime Rules to Correct Misclassified Workers
This week the DOL announced changes to the white collar overtime exemptions that take effect December 1, 2016. Every employment lawyer with a newsletter, blog or soapbox has written some summary of the new regulations. And while the regulations only effect the executive, administrative, professional and high compensated exemptions, Daniel Schwartz, a Connecticut employment…
DOL Announces Details of Final Rule Changing Regulations on the Overtime Exemptions
Last night the U.S. Department of Labor announced details of its long-awaited Final Rule on changes to the regulations interpreting the overtime exemptions to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The FLSA is the federal law requiring most employers to pay minimum wages and overtime to nonexempt employees. The Final Rule raises the minimum salary…
From the Archives: Spring Break Edition
While many of the kids (and a few employment law attorneys) are on Spring Break, I thought I would dust off a few posts from the archives. Back in 2009 I wrote about the rules that apply to the payment of accrued but unused vacation time on termination of employment in Texas. If you are…
Paying Nonexempt Employees at Different Rates for Different Work
With the slowdown in the oil patch, many service providers are looking for ways to better match employee compensation with reduced amount of work and revenue available without having to reduce headcount. One way to accomplish this objective is to pay different rates for different work. For example, a company may elect to pay a…
AT&T Warning Employees to Update Skills or Become Obsolete?
The New York Times profiled AT&T’s corporate education program where the company offers to pay for all or part of the classes employees take to help modernize their skills. The program has been in place for approximately two years and the purpose of the program, according to the article, is to “retrain its 280,000 employees…
Halliburton Agrees to $18M Overtime Settlement with DOL
The DOL announced a wage and hour settlement with Halliburton where Halliburton agrees to pay over $18,000,000 to over 1,000 workers. This settlement emphasizes two important points for me. First, it exemplifies the difficulty even large, publically traded companies can have in determining whether an employee meets one of the white collar exemptions. The announced…
Fifth Circuit Holds Mandatory Travel Time May Render Meal Periods Compensable under FLSA
The wave of wage and hour collective actions being filed and litigated in the district courts in the Fifth Circuit are making their way to the court of appeals. Last week the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued an opinion in an FLSA case over the compensability of meal periods provided by…