Change, while unavoidable in companies, is not always a welcomed thing. As the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) is revising their overtime exemption rules under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) for 2016, many companies are panicking at the response this will yield from their employees. The adjustment of what qualifies employees for exempt status, where their overtime hours working are not paid for, will lead many in workplace to punch time cards whom have never done so before. Personally, the thought of being paid for the work I do after hours would be gladly received as an increased salary. However, many employees interpret their transition from exempt to nonexempt as a degradation of their professional status.
Employers can expect many
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This will be a new practice for many of them. It will be hard to accept and even implement,” said Robert Boonin, immediate past chair of the Wage and Hour Defense Institute, a network of wage and hour lawyers, and an attorney with Dykema in Detroit, Mich. “It'll be a cultural change to many and perceived as a step back in career growth.”
The benefits and privileges that come or are dropped from an exempt to nonexempt employee will also have to be reviewed by companies. Updates paid time off, vacation days, or life insurance must be given by companies to employees who's status has shifted. While the deadline to comply with the DOL and FLSA's action is December 1 of this year, human resources experts suggest the conversation regarding exempt status begins as early as
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Leaders should aim to highlight the benefits of status change, such as the fact that nonexempt employees will now be paid for their overtime hours. They can continue working their regular work hours, but benefit from additional compensation. A potential confusion managers need to clear up for employees is that newly nonexempt employees now have no control over the hours they can and cannot work. Marie LaMarche, SHRMSCP, labor relations division director for Tacoma, Wash.based CHI Franciscan Health, states in the Society for Human Resource Management, “If the salaried basis is important to an employer’s employees, then it is probably important to use that method of compensation... Relaying that they will now be paid overtime often brings about comments like, ‘Our department is not allowed OT, so that means I’m not going to get my work done. Often, employees feel that nonexempt means [working] 8 to 5 every day, and they can’t work a minute past that. But flexibility can still occur. If an employee needs to stay late for a specific task or meeting, then they can adjust their time on a different day during that
Susan Kellar contends that she is entitled to overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act for work performed prior to the official start of her work shift. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of her employer, Summit Seating, because it found that Kellar's pre-shift activities were “preliminary,” that any work Kellar performed before her shift was “de minimis,” and that Summit did not know that Kellar was engaging in pre-shift work. While we disagree with the district court's conclusions regarding the “preliminary”
Almost two years ago the company where I am employed, RGIS LLC, mandated a pay policy change for the hourly employees. Hourly employees make up over 95% of RGIS’s labor staff. This new, four-tier payment scale, aptly named “Pay 4 Performance” (p4), ultimately affected thousands of employees who had been with the company for years and had high pay rates simply as a result of longevity. The four new levels would have a matching pay scale based upon each individual employee’s production. These levels are what RGIS calls an ASET level: Auditor, Specialist, Expert, and TopGun, with each level advancing to a higher production and pay rank, respectively (Company).
According to the established FLSA, non-exempt employees working on an hourly basis should make a living wage working the forty hour work week. Currently,minimum wage is not equal to the living wage. An action needs to be taken now, before the middle class completely disappears. One percent of the populations owns more of the wealth than the other ninety-nine percent.If the working class is not able to improve its current situation only two social classes will exist. America will be divided by a high well paid class and a low class with a minimum wage
...lley, W. H., Jennings, K. M., Wolters, R. S., & Mathis, R. L. (2012). Employment & Labor Relations. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.
When workers work overtime, they display a high degree of commitment to the task at hand and are thus usually compensated for the extra hours they put in. However, this is only possible when there is mutual respect between the employees and employers. An employer who is negligent of the effort a worker puts in his/her work creates job dissatisfaction and distance in the workplace. Beth Shulman in her work The Betrayal of Work, introduces the pharmacy technical assistant, Judy Smithfield. Her job requires accuracy and scrutiny, which is often very time consuming. Without sufficient help, she finds herself working six days a week. Logically, considering the difficulty of her task, reasonable compensation, respect and appreciation should follow. However, her customers are ignorant and can be angry and impatient despite the effort she makes. How can one be satisfied working in such conditions? Commitment means nothing to her employers. Thus she is not a source of profit for the upper classes; her duties are simply essential but don’t deserve monetary merit in their
Imagine having to clock out mid-shift to prevent getting paid overtime, but not leaving for another hour or two. Having to punch out for break but work through it, or having a paid vacation taken away as if it never existed? Situations relative to these are reality and are classified as wage theft, defined by the wage theft website as “a variety of infractions that occur when workers do not receive their legally or contractually promised wages” (Wage Theft). The public is generally uneducated of the concept of wage theft and the effects it has on our society, let alone what can be done about it. The Wage Theft Prevention Act, an act established in 2011 by the state of New York, provides laws protecting working citizens, and is an act that should be effective nationwide. As a country, we support the terms “freedom”, “equality”, and “rights”; however, we need to focus on the working citizens of the United States and ensure equal rights for everyone.
conditions. During this leave the employee's benefits, position, health benefits and pay are protected as
Because of a 75 year old section of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, companies that use sheltered workshops to train workers with disabilities, such as Goodwill Industries, can legally pay their employees just pennies an hour. The section of the Fair Labor Standards Act that legalizes this behavior needs to be repealed in order to ensure fair pay and treatment of every employee in today’s workforce. To begin, I will explain the use of sheltered workshops and the timed tests used to determine subminimum wages for employees with disabilities. I will then go on to discuss the history of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and how companies use a section of the legislation to get away with paying their employees with disabilities so little. And finally I will discuss the ethics behind the use of this piece of legislation and also provide a counter argument which supports subminimum wages.
The most common type of exemption to the FLSA minimum wage and overtime regulations is called White Collar Exemptions. White collar exemptions include executive employees, administrative employees, professional employees, outside sales employees, and computer employees. To determine if an employee is exempt from minimum wage and overtime regulation the FLSA has designed three specific test, including: salary level, salary basis and job duties.
Recently we have recognized the need to utilize our hourly workforce more effectively which works to address the need to intrinsically motivate the hourly workforce. This has been achieved just recently by negotiating some ground-breaking agreements with the union that will change the way we do business.
Members of organized labor and Unions sacrificed much in the strive for higher wages. Workers were paid very poorly and did not make enough money to fully support themselves and their families. For example in modern times, citizens in New York City hold protests to raise hourly wages to a minimum of fifteen dollars an hour. Throughout time Union and labor workers have been paid poorly. Document A clearly shows evidence that although efforts were made, hours and wages were not changing as they should of been. Although the impact to change hour and wages didn't Chanel as much, it does not mean a great deal of effort was not made.
Sherman, Mitchell. “Equal Employment Opportunity: Legal Issues and Societal Consequences.” Public Personnel Management. Washington: March-April 2008. Print.
That could mean working 60 hours one week and as little as 35 in another. A non-exempt employee, on the other hand, only works a fixed amount of time. They are often held to stricter standards about breaks and total hours worked each week. Since non-exempt employees only earn wages for working, they often do not receive paid time off for vacation or
Holley, William H, Kenneth M. Jennings, and Roger S. Wolters. The Labor Relations Process. Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning, 2012. Print.
Many job seekers will face employment discrimination or perhaps to be treated differently because of their skin color, age, or religion. Although it is illegal to discriminate in hiring and firing, however, one of the mo...