Vice President Joe Biden is expected to announce the official release of the U.S. Department of Labor's new overtime rule this afternoon in an appearance at Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream in Columbus, Ohio. I'll post the rule, which will change the white-collar overtime exemptions to the Fair Labor Standards Act, as soon as it's available. Meanwhile, the DOL has already released the ...

I won't make this too painful - after all, it's Friday, and on top of that, the Final Rule on white-collar overtime exemptions under the Fair Labor Standards Act is due imminently. That will be painful enough.

This quiz concerns wage payment, which is normally governed by state law, not the FLSA. Wage payment laws generally require that employees receive "all wages when due," and the laws ...

The final version of the U.S. Department of Labor rule on white-collar overtime exemptions was sent this week to the Office of Management and Budget, the last stage before issuance of the Rule. For our coverage of the proposed rule, issued last summer, please visit these links:

Proposed Overtime Rule Would More Than Double Salary Threshold for Exempt Employees

Will "Duties Test" Be ...

A federal judge in Indiana dismissed yesterday all that remained of a lawsuit filed by student athletes, alleging that they were "employees" and therefore entitled to the minimum wage under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Don Prophete, Jim Goh, and Steve Moore of Constangy, Brooks, Smith & Prophete, LLP, represented the NCAA and hundreds of the university defendants.

The suit was ...

This is scary.

You'd think a person with "Manager" in her job title who was making more than $89,000 a year would be exempt from the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Not necessarily.

A federal judge in Maine ruled that Bottomline Technologies, Inc., a financial processing services company, will have to face a jury trial on the wage-and-hour claims of Debra* Colello ...

Yesterday the U.S. Department of Labor began enforcement of its Home-Care Rule, which prohibits third-party employers from taking advantage of the overtime exemption for some domestic workers. The rule also narrows the definition of exempt "companionship services" under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Ellen Kearns, co-chair of our firm's Wage and Hour Practice Group, and I ...

"An apple a day keeps the doctor lawyer away." Here are five easy and inexpensive things that employers can do to minimize their risk of being sued and maximize their chances of victory if they do get sued. None of these involve major expense, or even the use of lawyers.

1. Err on the side of treating your workers as (a) non-exempt and (b) "employees." Let this be your default ...

Happy Memorial Day weekend, everybody! Top stories this week:

When are employers liable for the bad behavior of their customers? The sexual assault charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former head of the International Monetary Fund, who allegedly attacked an African-immigrant maid in his hotel room in New York City, have spurred some interesting discussion about female ...

John Gallagher, a plaintiffs' lawyer, had a good posting last week on TLNT entitled "Can an Employee Be Terminated for Simply Surfing the Internet?"

The point of the article was that, although this seems to be a legitimate ground for termination on its face, it really isn't because everybody surfs the internet at work. Therefore, terminations for this reason make John very happy ...