At a time when many states and localities are increasing the minimum wage, New Hampshire’s Senate passed a bill that would increase the state’s minimum wage to $12 per hour by 2022. The very next day, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu vetoed the bill. In doing so, Governor Sununu issued a veto message that said the bill would have a “detrimental effect” on the state’s residents and would lead to lost jobs, reduced hours, and less money in the pockets of employees.
Our colleagues Michael S. Kun, Jeffrey H. Ruzal, and Kevin Sullivan at Epstein Becker Green co-wrote a “Wage and Hour Self-Audits Checklist” for the Lexis Practice Advisor.
The checklist identifies the main risk categories for wage and hour self-audits. To avoid potentially significant liability for wage and hour violations, employers should consider wage and hour self-audits to identify and close compliance gaps.
In Tze-Kit Mui v. Massachusetts Port Authority, Massachusetts’ highest court held that Massachusetts law does not require employers to pay departing employees for accrued, unused sick time within the timeframe prescribed for “wages,” as the term is defined by the Massachusetts Wage Act.
In reaching its decision, the Court analyzed the plain meaning of “wages” under the Act and concluded that the legislature did not intend that “wages” would include sick time. The decision removes a significant concern for Massachusetts employers who are strictly liable for treble damages — and can face criminal liability — for failing to pay wages in a timely manner.
As 2017 comes to a close, recent headlines have underscored the importance of compliance and training. In this Take 5, we review major workforce management issues in 2017, and their impact, and offer critical actions that employers should consider to minimize exposure:
In many industries, sales are subject to ebbs and flows. Sometimes the fish are biting; sometimes they aren’t.
A common device that employers with commissioned salespeople use to take the edge off of the slow weeks and to ensure compliance with minimum wage and overtime laws is the recoverable draw. Under such a system, an employee who earns below a certain amount in commissions for a given period of time, often a week, receives an advance of as-yet unearned commissions to bring the employee’s earnings for the period up to a specified level. Then in the next period, the employees’ commissions pay off the draw balance before the employee receives further payouts of commissions. Occasionally, employees challenge these recoverable draw pay systems.
In Moon et al v. Breathless, Inc., the Third Circuit reviewed the dismissal of a class and collective action under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the New Jersey Wage and Hour Law and the New Jersey Wage Payment Law. The District Court for the District of New Jersey had dismissed the named plaintiff’s claims based on an arbitration clause in the written agreement between the her and Breathless, the club where she worked as a dancer.
In her lawsuit, the plaintiff alleged that she and other dancers were misclassified as independent contractors, and that Breathless unlawfully failed to pay them minimum wages and overtime pay.
Not all new laws go into effect on the first of the year. On July 1, 2017, new minimum wage laws went into effect in several locales in California. Specifically:
A Maine dairy company has received a potentially expensive grammar lesson from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, which held on March 13, 2017, that the company’s delivery drivers may be eligible for up to $10 million in overtime pay, because the lack of a comma in the statute regarding exemptions from the state’s wage and hour law rendered the scope of the exemption ambiguous.
On March 31, 2016, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed into law a bill increasing the statewide minimum wage on a phased in basis over the next five years, to $15.00 per hour in some, but not all New York counties (“Minimum Wage Law”). This is in addition to a bill enacted on December 31, 2015, that increased the subminimum wage for tipped employees in the hospitality industry from $5 to $7.50 per hour.
The Minimum Wage Law now provides for a tiered increase from the current statewide rate of $9.00, to $11, $13, and $15 per hour effective December 31, 2016, 2017, and 2018 respectively, for work performed in New York City for employers with more than 10 employees. A slightly longer phase in period, running to December 2019, is provided for New York City employers with 10 or fewer employees and for Westchester, Nassau, and Suffolk counties. For these counties, the minimum wage is set to increase to $10.00 per hour by December 31, 2016, and then $1 every year until reaching $15.00 per hour on December 31, 2021.
