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On April 27, 2021, President Biden issued Executive Order 14026, raising to $15 per hour — with increases to be published annually — the minimum wage certain federal contractors must pay workers performing work “on or in connection with” a covered Federal contract or subcontract. The types of contracts impacted include those covered by the…

Will the DOL again seek to raise the minimum salary level for exempt “white collar” employees?

In testimony before the House Education and Labor Committee on June 10, 2011, Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh stated that the Department of Labor (DOL) is reviewing a Final Rule issued during the Trump administration, in which the DOL…

While deciding to make effective some portions of the Tipped Regulations Final Rule published in the final weeks of the former administration, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has proposed further delay and consideration of the most controversial provisions of the Rule, including the elimination of the “80/20 Rule” that purports to limit the percentage…

On March 11, 2021, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued Notices of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRMs) to withdraw the Joint Employer and Independent Contractor Final Rules published during the previous administration.

The Joint Employer Final Rule

The Joint Employer Final Rule went into effect in January 2020 and addressed the standard for determining whether an…

On March 2, 2021, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) formally delayed the effective date of the Independent Contractor Final Rule, from March 8, 2021 to May 7, 2021. The Final Rule, published during the last two weeks of the prior administration, provides that “an individual is an independent contractor, as distinguished from an ‘employee’…

As expected, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has formally delayed the effective date of the Tip Regulations Final Rule, from March 1, 2021 to April 30, 2021. The Tip Regulations Final Rule, issued in late December 2020, implemented a 2018 amendment to the FLSA that permits tipped employees, such as restaurant servers, to pool…

One day after President Biden entered office, the White House issued a memorandum directing all agencies to review, and consider delaying, any rules that had been issued by the former administration but that were not yet effective. Following that directive, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has proposed delaying the effective dates of the recently-issued…

On January 29, 2020, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) announced that it was abandoning the Payroll Audit Independent Determination (PAID) program, effective immediately. PAID was introduced in 2018 as a self-audit program, designed to allow an employer who uncovered potential Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) wage violations to voluntarily report those findings to the…

As President-elect Joe Biden selects members of his Cabinet and prepares for his transition into the presidency, he and a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives may pursue a number of significant pieces of federal workplace legislation. Many of these employment law measures successfully passed the House in 2019 and 2020. And, with the…

Continuing the practice it reinstituted during the current administration, on August 31, 2020 the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Wage Hour Division (WHD) issued four new Opinion Letters, addressing a variety of topics. That brings the total to 57 Opinion Letters issued since 2018, including the re-publication of 17 Opinion Letters withdrawn during the Obama…