NOTE FROM ROBIN: As I posted last night, the U.S. Department of Labor Overtime Rule, which would have taken effect a week from tomorrow, has been preliminarily enjoined. I am re-posting here a client bulletin by Jim Coleman, co-chair of our Wage and Hour Compliance and Litigation Practice Group, and me. This went out to our clients this morning.

The new regulations that ...

Judge Amos Mazzant has issued a nationwide preliminary injunction blocking the U.S. Department of Labor's overtime rule from taking effect as scheduled on December 1. I'm reading the decision now and will be back with details as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, here's a copy of the decision for you. We can read it together!

Congratulations to President-Elect Donald J. Trump, and to everyone who was elected or reelected to office yesterday. With a President Trump and Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, employers may see some changes in the form of less aggressive regulatory agencies, a National Labor Relations Board that is more employer-friendly, and some relatively conservative ...

The holiday season is almost upon us, and with it comes one of the largest “gifts” the U.S. Department of Labor has ever provided – the new Final Rule on overtime exemptions, which will, in all likelihood, take effect as scheduled on December 1. Unfortunately for employers, this gift is heavily weighted in favor of expanding overtime eligibility for employees, and it does so by ...

Last week, two lawsuits were filed in federal court in Texas seeking to block the Final Rule on white-collar exemptions to the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which was issued in May. Meanwhile, legislation that would delay the effective date of the rule until June 2017 just passed the U.S. House of Representatives, and there is other legislation pending in ...

Thanks to Law360 for alerting us to this!

Straight from the courthouse to you -- I haven't even read this yet, but here is a copy of the lawsuit, which was filed today in federal court in the Eastern District of Texas.

UPDATE (4:41 p.m. EDT): Here's another one, filed in the same court - this one is some trade groups and a slew of Chambers of Commerce in Texas!

  ...

Employers, when was the last time you had a real makeover? Let's do one now!

The new white-collar exemptions under the Fair Labor Standards Act will go into effect December 1, but it's a good idea for employers to prepare now because there are a lot of changes that will have to be made, communicated, and taught to employees before then.

The salary threshold for most white-collar ...

My first job out of college was as a non-exempt clerical, and I wasn't a very "good fit." The work aside, I chafed at the rigid rules about start times-stop times-breaks-lunch hours-quitting times. If there was some work that I wanted to finish up and it was "lunch time," I couldn't take the extra 15 minutes needed to get it done. I had to stop right then and there, and go to lunch, or at least ...

"Do this, don't do that, can't you read the rules . . ."*

Of course, the mega-topic this week was the U.S. Department of Labor's Final Rule on white-collar exemptions to the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Ellen Kearns, co-chair of our Wage and Hour Practice Group, wrote a great Client Bulletin on the Rule, taking a complex subject and explaining it in a pithy and ...

BREAKING NEWS:  CALIFORNIA FALLS INTO THE SEA!

Well, not exactly.  But some natural phenomena occur only once or twice in a lifetime—like Halley’s Comet, or the turn of the Millennium, or the Mets winning the pennant.  Another one happened today:  the FLSA has become more protective or workers than California law, which is ordinarily the nation’s statistical outlier in the ...