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Each month, Mployer Advisor collects and presents some of the most relevant and most pressing recent changes in law, compliance, and policy in areas related to employee benefits, health care, and human resources.
Last week, in the case of Navy Yard Hospitality Corp v. NLRB, the Supreme Court ruled that employees who are paid a daily rate for their work are owed overtime pay when their work exceeds 40 hours in a given week.
In that case, the employer ran a banquet catering company and paid employees a flat day rate regardless of how many hours were worked per week.
Ultimately, the court rejected the employer’s argument that employees paid per day were an exception to the Fair Labor Standards Act and held that such employees are entitled to overtime pay in accordance with FLSA guidelines.
You can read more here as summarized by the National Legal Review.
Last month, the Department of Labor issued a field bulletin to clarify some issues regarding break and leave rules for remote workers.
The field bulletin makes clear that the Fair Labor Standards Act requires that non-exempt employees be compensated for short 20 minute breaks whether they are working on or off site (including reasonable time for breastfeeding/pumping but not including qualifying meal breaks).
Further, the bulletin addresses eligibility questions with regard to remote work and when the Family and Medical Leave Act will apply, even if the employee works remotely more than 75 miles away from the worksite and/or there are fewer than 50 employees working on a site, not including remote workers.
According to a new rule published at the end of last month, the IRS has lowered the mandatory electronic filing threshold from 250 forms down to 10 forms. That means, for all filings due on or after January 1st, 2024, any filing that combines 10 or more forms must be submitted electronically.
In effect 5 employees each with a w-2 and a 1095b to cover their employment and enrollment in a health plan would put you over the threshold thereby requiring that filing to be submitted electronically.
The new rule outlined a few additional provisions and clarifications as well, including that corrections to any forms that have been filed electronically must now be filed electronically, as well.
You can view the new rule announcement here.
A group of lawyers took a look at some of the legal implications of payroll obligations as viewed from the employee, company, and even investor perspective.
According to federal law and under most state law as well, employers are required to meet certain standards as to when pay is due (relative to when the work was performed) as well as how frequently pay is due.
Should employers fail to meet those standards, employees are legally entitled to 100% wages owed in all cases, and in some states/cases employees are due 200% of wages owed as a punitive and compensatory measure. Importantly, lost access to payroll funds (as is the case with some Silicon Valley Bank depositors) is not an available defense for most companies under existing wage laws, even if the company is not directly at fault.
In fact, depending on the jurisdiction and applicable law, even investors like private equity funds and in some cases individual company officers and directors can potentially be held liable for illegally withholding wages, so the reach of these legal obligations can be quite broad.
You can read more about wage laws and this legal analysis here.
Back in February, the National Labor Relations Board issued decisions that return to the previously held standard for evaluating the legality of severance agreements, and this week, General Counsel for the the NLRB Jennifer Abruzzo followed up with some additional clarification to internal staff about how the new rule is to be enforced.
Specifically, Abruzzo noted that the decision forbids any severance agreement provisions that inhibit an employee’s ability to file lawsuits or to interact with the NLRB in order to report on potential employment violations. Also, Abruzzo made it clear that these rules apply retroactively to any severance agreement provisions that may have been enacted prior to the issuance of this latest ruling.
Employers, however, are still permitted to include non-disparagement provisions with severance packages that proscribe the employee from making any statements about the company that meet the legal definition of defamation.
You can read more about this NLRB ruling and clarification here.
The annual figures as compiled by the US Department of Labor are in and the data is clear, 2022 recorded a significant reduction in Family Medical Leave Act Violations leading to a much smaller net total amount of back wages owed by companies found to be in violation of the law.
The total number of FMLA complaints fielded by the DOL dropped by almost 16% between 2021 at 928 complaints and 2022, which recorded 780 on the year. Prior to the 2022 reduction, annual complaints had averaged 1,022 over the previous 5 years.
Meanwhile, the total amount of back wages that were found to have been unlawfully withheld over the course of 2022 was down by nearly 40% year-over-year, and the total number of victimized employees fell by more than 20% down from 429 to 339.
You can access that data here.
Last Week, The US Department of Labor and The US Department of Health & Human Services teamed-up and pledged to better coordinate and redouble their efforts to identify and eliminate child labor law violations in this country.
The agencies announced that their partnership in this matter had been formalized, and protocols and procedures had been put into place to define the scope of responsibility for the various entities and offices involved.
Specifically, the agreement notes these cooperative efforts will seek to identify places and companies where illegal child labor is occurring, aid investigations by supplying relevant data where it is needed, and link efforts to ensure proper care and support services are provided to all child labor victims that are uncovered.
You can read more about this project here.
Looking for more exclusive content? Check out what’s new on the Mployer Advisor blog, and be sure to check out Mployer Advisor’s new podcast “This Week in Benefits.”
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