Jury Verdict Ignores DOL Administrator’s Interpretation

In March 2010 the Department of Labor (DOL) issued an Administrator's Interpretation (AI) declaring that mortgage loan officers are hourly workers subject to overtime pay and not exempt employees on a salary or commission schedule. Just this past month, however, a federal jury concluded that 350 mortgage loan officers employed by Quicken Loans are indeed [...]

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DOL Mulls New Approach to Compliance

The Department of Labor (DOL), in issuing an updated regulatory agenda this past week, announced it was considering a major change in its approach to enforcement. Instead of letting businesses play what it called a "catch me if you can" game, the DOL said it will issue regulations requiring each company to develop and implement [...]

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DOL Targets New York Health Care Industry for Misclassification Audits

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), operating on information from its Albany field office, has targeted the health care industry in New York state for investigation into the misclassification of workers and subsequent under-payment of overtime wages. Underlying this effort is a finding by the department’s Albany district office that, during the past five years, [...]

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Ninth Circuit Court Signs Off on 12-Hour Shift Scheme

In 1993, the nurses at Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center in California voluntarily created and voted for a plan to work 12-hour instead of 8-hour shifts while retaining their hourly rate without being paid overtime. Under the plan, the nurses went from $22.83 an hour for 8 hours to $19.57 for 12 hours. However, for [...]

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Low-Wage American Workers Report Widespread Abuse

A study done by the Center for Urban Economic Development, the National Employment Law Project, and the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment has turned up some startling statistics revealing persistent wage abuse. Surveying 4,300 low-wage workers in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, the consortium found that: 26 percent reported being paid [...]

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Off the Radar and Off the Clock: Some FLSA Misconceptions

We’ve just posted a new white paper in that section on the Personnel Concepts new Web site entitled “Popular Misconceptions,” in which we examine the ingenious ways that employers seek to stay off the overtime-pay radar of the Department of Labor (DOL). Let’s look at one of those methods: Say Employer A sends 20 hourly [...]

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