75 years ago the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) was signed into law. It has undergone several changes since then, but one thing remains the same: employers still strugle with complying. This provides you with 7.5 of the most frequest errors made my employers.

1. Exactly 75 years ago,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed over 100 bills into law,
including the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The FLSA intially covered only about
20 percent of the workforce, setting standards for child labor, minimum wage and
a 44-hour maximum workweek. The FLSA has undergone several changes since
then, but one thing remains the same: employers still struggle with compliance.
Therefore, instead of providing a cake with 75 candles, we are paying respect to the
FLSA by pointing out 7.5 frequent mistakes employers make.
FAILING TO PAY FOR
INADEQUATELY
COMPENSABLE
TRACKING TIME FOR
BREAKS
NON-EXEMPT
You don’t have to pay
EMPLOYEES
The DOL offers a free
workers for meal breaks
timesheet mobile app for
that are at least 30
employees to track their
minutes long, but they must be
time if the employer is doing a poor
completely releived from work. Also,
job of it. This could be the so-called
some time and attendance systems
Exhibit A in an FLSA complaint.
automatically deduct time for meal
Consider an efficient and effective
breaks, even when employees perform
time and attendance system.
duties. Finally, rest breaks of 5-20
minutes are compensable.
NOT UNDERSTANDING
FAILING TO PAY FOR
THE TRAVEL RULE
TIME WORKED AWAY
FROM THE OFFICE
A non-exempt employee
You must pay for all
traveling for work purposes
hours worked.
must be paid for travel time
Non-exempt employees
during the normal workday.
who check work-related emails after
The rationale is that the employee is
hours are considered to be working
merely substituting travel for regular
and should be paid as well. Consider a
work. You must pay for this time even if
policy that clearly sets out
travel occurs on a non-work day (e.g., a
expectations in these areas.
Saturday or Sunday).
ALLOWING
EMPLOYEES TO WORK
NOT FOLLOWING THE
EXTRA WITHOUT
CHILD LABOR RULES
COMPENSATION
Legions of teenagers find
Good employees will
summer jobs, but many
often voluntarily arrive
employers violate the clear
early or stay late to make sure a task
rules that are designed to
gets done. The employer must pay
protect them from what is termed as
them for this time unless it puts a
“oppressive child labor.” This includes
stop to it and disciplines them
hazardous work, and permissible work
accordingly if they don’t.
hours for those under the age of 16.
IMPROPERLY
FORGETTING ABOUT
COMPUTING OVERTIME
STATE LAWS
We all know that overtime
This is half an error
is calculated at 1.5 times
because it points to the
the regular rate of pay. The
fact that the FLSA is not
rate of pay includes shift
the only law in town. Many
differentials, nondiscretionary bonuses,
states have broader
commissions, on-call pay and other
protections, including
incentive payments.
overtime for hours worked
over eight in a day and higher
minimum wage.
copyright 2013