If your business has ‘exempt’ employees there are significant changes effective 12/1/2016 that will have an estimated $1.2 Billion effect on U.S. businesses.
As an employer you should review and update both your employee manual and employee pay procedures after discussing these changes with your Human Resources or legal professionals. Failure to update your procedures and documentation could open you up to significant costs as you pay fines, legal fees and unexpected overtime wages.
Jackson Lewis P.C., a law firm specializing in employment law has developed a very informative recorded webinar.
Some key features of the Department of Labor’s (DOL) changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) include:
Some potential fixes to those with exempt employees that will no longer qualify after 12/1/2016 include:
Note that Offering Comp Time to employees that work more than 40 hours per week in lieu of overtime appears to be forbidden by the act.
Before concluding this article I’d like to leave you with a few additional thoughts:
Finally, there is a significant potential for additional labor costs…to the tune of over $1.2B per year for U.S. employers, so make sure that you spend the time necessary to assure compliance.
Don’t get yourself in Uber trouble by giving a Lyft for pay. Ridesharing companies are an emerging opportunity for folks with a drivers license and a car to make a few extra dollars but carefully review the potential risks and rewards before signing yourself up as a driver or even a passenger for a ridesharing firm like Uber, Sidecar or Lyft. Transportation network companies like these use smartphone communications technology to connect individuals who want a ride with drivers who are willing to give a lift for a fee. In addition to violating livery (taxi) licensing laws in many jurisdictions these drivers generally use their personal vehicles and intend to rely on their personal auto policies which invariably have livery and/or business exclusions written into the policy language.
Essentially this means that most Uber, Sidecar and Lyft drivers are operating without insurance protections and are gambling all their assets and all their future wages on whether or not they are involved in an accident. Remember that an auto policy is intended to protect you not only from accidents that are your fault, but also from accidents that are the other guy’s fault when she/he is unknown (hit & run) or unable (due to no or low insurance liability limits and limited assets to sieze) to pay for the injuries and property damage consequences. The financial losses from auto accidents can easily exceed $100,000 or even $1,000,000 for serious accidents.
Our recommendation is to stay out of Uber trouble by avoiding these Lyft companies as a passenger and a driver unless you/your driver has secured adequate commercial livery insurance to cover such risks.
Yennie & Jones Insurance is pleased to offer protection from the the following Wards Top 50 Property & Casualty Insurance Company Selectees:
Note: The companies listed above rank as the top performing property-casualty companies based on the Ward Group annual analysis of the insurance industry. They each have passed all safety and consistency screens and have achieved superior performance over the five years analyzed (2004-2008). Companies are listed alphabetically. An important objective is to benchmark their performance as a group with the rest of the property-casualty insurance industry. The Ward’s 50 list and comparisons based on benchmarks set by Ward’s 50 companies are available in Ward’s Results®, an insurance industry financial reference series.
* 19-year recipient, 1991-2009.
Expanded Leave Benefits for Servicemember
On January 28, 2008, President Bush signed into law H.R. 4986, the National Defense Authorization Act of 2008. Although human resources and employee benefits professionals can usually ignore most military spending legislation, this one definitively has an impact on employers. Tucked into this law is a provision that expands the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) for the first time since the law was enacted in 1993.
Two New Categories of FMLA Leave
H.R. 4986 creates two new categories of FMLA leave. Employees taking leaves under these provisions are entitled to the same job protection benefits and continuation of health coverage as those taking other FMLA leaves.
Combined Leaves
The law limits an eligible employee to a combined total of 26 weeks of leave in a given 12-month period for a combination of Servicemember Family Leave and any other type of FMLA leave. For example, an employee might take 12 weeks of “qualifying exigency” leave when her reservist spouse is notified that he is being called to active duty in Iraq. If three months later the spouse is seriously injured, the employee would only have 14 weeks of leave available to care for her injured husband. Or, an employee might take 10 weeks of FMLA time after the birth of her child. If two months later, her covered servicemember spouse were seriously injured, she would only be eligible for an additional 16 weeks of leave to care for him.
Provisions that Mirror Existing FMLA Rules
Definition of “Serious Injury or Illness”
The new provisions define “serious injury or illness” as “an injury or illness incurred by the member in the line of duty in the Armed Forces that may render the member medically unfit to perform the duties of the member’s office, grade, rank or rating.”
This is different from the definition of a “serious health condition,” the trigger for the other categories of FMLA leave. A “serious health condition” under the FMLA is generally an illness, injury, impairment or physical or mental condition that involves either inpatient care or continuing treatment by a health provider. While this may turn out to be a distinction without a difference, the discrepancy between the two definitions could lead to different standards for a leave taken to care for a servicemember family member than for a non-servicemember family member. This would create administrative difficulties for employers trying to determine whether specific employees are qualified to take FMLA leave.