Justin R. Barnes

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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…

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…

On January 19, 2021, eight states (Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania), along with the District of Columbia, filed a lawsuit seeking to enjoin the Tip Regulations Final Rule published by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) in late December 2020. The Final Rule, which currently is scheduled to become…

The laws governing wages and hours of work affect nearly everyone. How employees are paid, whether as hourly non-exempt, salaried-exempt, tipped, or commissioned sales workers, and how much they are paid, are questions of deep interest to employees and employers alike. And because the laws regulating wages generally apply only to employees, as opposed to…

On the last day of 2020, the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) ushered out the year with two new Opinion Letters. These may be the final two Opinion Letters of the Trump Administration and perhaps the last two for a while, depending on whether the Biden Administration continues the…

Agreeing with the district court, the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has concluded that the mandatory service charges imposed by a restaurant on dining parties of six or more were not “tips” under the FLSA. However, the Court of Appeals reversed and remanded the trial court’s determination that the FLSA’s “commissioned salesperson” overtime…

The plaintiff sought more than $12,000 in unpaid wages on his FLSA claims, rejected the defendant employer’s Rule 68 offer of judgment of $3,500 on those claims, and then was awarded only $97.20 plus an equal amount of liquidated damages. Under these circumstances, the Eleventh Circuit held that the trial court properly awarded the defendant…

Concluding that the unstructured time spent by the plaintiffs between arriving at the oil refinery and the beginning of their shifts was not “integral and indispensable” to their duties erecting scaffolds at the refinery, the Fifth Circuit held that this time was not compensable under the FLSA.  Bridges v. Empire Scaffold, LLC, 2017 U.S.…

The U.S. Department of Labor confirmed on October 30, 2017 that it intends to “undertake new rulemaking with regard to overtime.”  While the DOL simultaneously filed an appeal of the district court order holding the prior overtime rule invalid, the DOL stated it intends to request that the Fifth Circuit “hold the appeal in abeyance …