Justin R. Barnes

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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit recently affirmed the dismissal of a plaintiff’s Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and New York Labor Law (NYLL) overtime pay claims in federal court, after she previously had obtained relief for substantially similar claims in small claims court. Simmons v. Trans Express, Inc., 2021…

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…

An administrative assistant, who regularly made three to five telephone calls out of state per week to her employer’s clients and vendors, may have sufficiently engaged in interstate commerce to establish “individual coverage” under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit concluded. St. Elien v. All County…

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…

In April 2020, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that paying an employee a set amount for each day he works (i.e. on a “day rate” basis) does not satisfy the “salary basis” component required to qualify as overtime-exempt under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA),…

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…

Making good on President Biden’s campaign promise, the House of Representatives has included in its $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief bill, known as the “American Rescue Plan Act of 2021,” revisions to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) that would increase the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2025. The current federal minimum wage…

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…