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Last year, New York joined a handful of other states , including California, Minnesota, Hawaii, Washington, and Maryland in granting overtime pay to farm workers. Yet as the law took effect on January 1, 2020, there was already a hitch: Workers would only receive time-and-a-half pay after they had already worked a 60-hour week, 20 hours higher than the threshold that governs virtually all other categories of employees in the United States.
In case you are keeping track:
Dept. of Labor launches initiative
DALLAS, TX – The U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division (WHD) has launched an outreach and enforcement initiative to improve compliance with the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) among businesses in the child care industry in its Southwest region.
WHD will conduct compliance assistance seminars and will increase close communication and coordination with child care industry stakeholders. Outreach will be coupled with strategic and data-driven enforcement efforts to test industry compliance and identify and address trends in violations.
How weak overtime protections contribute to inequality - Marketplace
The Fair Labor Standards Act requires employers to pay employees who work more than 40 hours a week overtime pay, generally 1.5 times their regular pay rate, for those extra hours.
But one of the biggest exceptions to that rule is for salaried employees whose income is above a certain threshold, with the logic that highly paid white-collar workers have enough power in their workplace that they don't need overtime protections.
That threshold, below which salaried workers would earn overtime, was regularly updated with inflation for years until 1975, when it was set at what would be around $57,000 in 2020 dollars. But today the threshold is just $35,568 — set by the Trump administration in 2019 and following a federal judge blocking the Obama administration's 2016 attempt to raise the threshold to $47,476 and adopt a provision to automatically update it with inflation.
DOL Issues Opinion Letters on FLSA Exempt Status and Ministerial Exception
DOL opinion letters describe how the agency would enforce statutes and regulations in specific circumstances presented by an employer, worker or other party who requests the opinion. Opinion letters are not binding, but there may be a safe harbor for employers that show they relied on one.
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Under the FLSA, workers must be paid 1 1/2 times their regular rate of pay for all hours worked beyond 40 in a workweek unless they fall under an exemption. The most commonly used exemptions are the administrative, executive and professional, collectively called white-collar exemptions.
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First Transit Drivers Get Conditional Cert. In OT Lawsuit - Law360
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Editorial — Take another look: State legislators should revise law on farmworker overtime |
The state Department of Labor's Farm Wage Board decided Dec. 31 to delay lowering the 60-hour farm labor overtime threshold until at least next November. Watertown Daily Times
While farmers throughout the state recently got a breather when it comes to having to pay more overtime to their workers, this issue will hang over them unless authorities come to their senses.
Last year, the state Department of Labor created a Farm Wage Board to determine if the threshold for overtime should be adjusted. Initiating this board was part of a law passed in 2019 to address farmworker concerns about various working conditions.
DOL Issues Final Wage and Hour Opinion Letters
To close out 2020, the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division ("WHD") recently issued two new opinion letters addressing overtime payments for caregivers and travel time for partial-day teleworkers under the Fair Labor Standards Act ("FLSA"). We recommend a close review of these opinion letters as they offer a helpful overview of key FLSA principles and may provide answers to questions shared by numerous employers.
In Opinion Letter FLSA2020-19 , the WHD addressed whether an employee who voluntarily teleworks for part of the day and works at the office for the remainder, and performs certain personal tasks in between (but otherwise performs no work during the commute), must be compensated for travel time between her home and the office under several different scenarios (some where the employee's work preceded the travel to personal appointments and ultimately the office, and others where the employee
Happening on Twitter
Farmworkers make sure there is still food to put on our tables. They need health & safety protections AND hazard pa… https://t.co/zDgTIcXTBq SEIU (from U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico) Tue Jan 12 21:10:01 +0000 2021
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