Some 300 Philadelphia paramedics sued for full overtime pay, claiming that they, unlike the firefighters with whom they usually work, are not exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Theirs was the fourth notable class-action suit on this issue.
Does an employer have to compensate an employee with a work-related injury for her time away from work for a medical re-evaluation? The answer depends on whether the employer directed the employee to attend the doctor's appointment.
The obvious answer is that it depends on how heavy the briefcase is--and on whose definition of work prevails. A group of New York City fire alarm inspectors charged that because they are required to carry paperwork weighing between 15 and 20 pounds during their daily commutes, the commutes are work time for which they should be paid.
Six Georgia paramedics who were switched from nonexempt to exempt status charged that their reclassification violated the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Because they had become firefighters, the county made the change under a congressional amendment to FLSA. The paramedics disagreed.
A large group of Maryland corrections workers filed a grievance over a new requirement that they fill in for nonexempt employees after their regular hours. The governor had ordered the prison system to reduce overtime by $127,000 a year, and having exempt officers perform extra duties was how the system coped with the mandate.
A Virginia sales executive was either fired or laid off less than 2 years after being hired. In response, he sued, alleging that his former employer had misclassified him as exempt under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and now owed him overtime. Two weeks later, the company counter-sued, alleging fraud on a particular sales contract. The former employee added a retaliation charge to his FLSA suit.
A New York staffing agency has many nurses on its rolls. The agency's clients are hospitals, who contact the agency to obtain nursing care for their patients. But the U.S. Department of Labor has been after the agency for years, charging that it doesn't properly pay its nurses for overtime work.
Wage-and-hour law is making more and more headlines. Some of America's biggest corporations, including Wal-Mart, IBM, and top supermarket and brokerage fines have been hit with huge lawsuits, ending in equally large settlements.
If given the choice between receiving compensatory time off or overtime pay, a majority of human resource professionals would take the former, according to a recent Compensation.BLR.com poll.
The U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division has unveiled a new tool for helping employers and workers understand and calculate overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
