Wage & Hour

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The U.S. Department of Labor recently abandoned its six-factor internship test in favor of the seven-factor primary beneficiary test utilized by most Courts. The primary benefit test adopts a temporal limitation for the internship that was not in the old six-factor test and incorporates two elements linking eligibility to the intern’s education programs and academic…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…