Employers should be aware that the Department of Labor is increasing its Wage and Hour Division’s enforcement efforts. The Department of Labor has stated that protection of workers’ rights is a “top priority” for the DOL. As evidence of that, DOL has added 250 additional wage-and-hour investigators. The intent is to pay prompt attention to complaints about wage-and-hour violations. According to the Secretary of Labor, in the past three months alone, the DOL has collected more than $2 million in back wages owed to more than 500 workers.

Areas of concern to employers include:

• federal minimum wage, overtime, and record keeping requirements;

• how to determine which work-related activities are considered “hours worked” and consequently hours for which employees must be paid overtime pay;

• whether a particular employee is exempt from the Fair Labor Standard Act’s minimum wage and overtime pay requirements; and

• contract labor or employee status.

This post written by Attorney Tom Solomon – Houston, TX