Quick Printing

JUL 2014

Quick Printing is the only business resource serving the quick and small commercial printing niche in North America. Quick Printing is the authoritative source for business information, emerging technologies, shop profiles and management insight.

Issue link: https://quickprinting.epubxp.com/i/339437

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 23 of 35

24 Q U I C K P R I N T I N G / J u l y 2 0 1 4 w w w. M y P R I N T R e s o u r c e . c o m © iStockphoto/Thinkstock Wage Policies Are a Trap for the Unwary HUMAN RESOURCES Warning: Withholding OT pay can come back to punch your clock. By Debra Thompson The FLSA protects workers from unfair wage practices by employers. Under the FLSA and similar state laws, many work- ers have the right to receive the mini- mum wage, payment for all time worked, and overtime pay calculated at 1.5 times their regular rate of pay for all hours worked over 40 in a work week. When it comes to paying your employees, you MUST know the law and follow it. As I worked with owners and manag- ers, these were the cases I most often encountered: • Misclassifying salaried employees as exempt managers, supervisors, admin- istrators, or professionals. Just because A n article in a February edition of Tucson Daily Star reported that a local hotel, part of a major chain, had been ordered to pay thousands of dollars in back pay to its employees. The hotel agreed to pay 44 current and previous employees back wages, interest, and damages. The complaint involved intentionally withholding overtime pay. This article reminded me once again of the wage and benefts issues I often encountered in my consulting travels. I fail to understand why some owners and managers are willing to take such huge risks by not following the laws established by the Fed- eral Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and by State Labor laws. Fair Labor Standards Act. Non-exempt employees may be paid on a salaried or hourly basis. For base pay programs, employers group jobs into three categories: hour- ly, salaried-nonexempt, and salaried- exempt. Hourly and salaried-nonexempt must be paid overtime under the FLSA requirements. Salaried-exempt positions are not required to have paid overtime, although some organizations have imple- mented policies to pay a straight rate for extensive hours of overtime. Failing to Credit and Pay Employ ees for All Time Spent Working In this day of digital time clocks, it should be very straight forward to fig- ure the hours worked and make sure that compensation is complete for those hours worked. For that to be so, employ- ers cannot require employees to perform work before or after punching in or out. All work must be done on the clock. Two other factors are often mistreated in cal- culating hours worked: 1. When employers do offer short breaks (usually lasting about five to 20 minutes), federal law considers the breaks as compensable work hours that would be included in the sum of hours worked during the work week and considered in determining if overtime was worked. 2. Some state labor laws require that there be a defined lunch break. Employ- ees in those states need to clock out for that lunch period because federal law decrees that bona fide meal periods (typi- cally lasting at least 30 minutes) serve a different purpose than coffee or snack breaks and, thus, are not work time and are not compensable. Failing to Pay for "Unauthorized" Overtime An employer who requires or permits an employee to work overtime is gen- you classified an employee as a salaried employee or given them a specific title that sounds like they are exempt does not mean they are not entitled to protection under the FLSA; and such employees may be entitled to overtime depending on the job duties performed. • Exempt employees are those who hold positions classified as executive, adminis- trative, professional, or outside sales and meet the specified criteria for exemption. Exempt employees must be paid on a salary basis with the exception of certain highly paid computer professionals. • Nonexempt employees are those who must be paid overtime under the QP_24-25_0714 Human.indd 24 6/16/14 4:05 PM

Articles in this issue

Links on this page

Archives of this issue

view archives of Quick Printing - JUL 2014