Don’t Be “That Company”
Besides it being immensely bad for public relations, attempting to offset your company’s expenses by docking your employees’ wages when their coronavirus stimulus checks arrive is a violation of Michigan’s wage & hours laws.
Category: wage and hours
It’s All in the Flux
The threshold for “exempt” employees — meaning, those who are not eligible for overtime — moves from $23k/yr to $34k/yr on January 1st, 2020. You may have formerly salaried employees who are back to needing to clock their time because of your need to track overtime. Clocking time may seem like a status hit to …
Overtime Redux, Redone Yet Again
As Yoga Berra said it’s like deja vu all over again Back in mid-2016, the US Dept of Labor under President Obama proposed that workers making less than about $50k/yr should get overtime. Those proposed rules were then put on hold by a federal judge in Texas back in January 2017. President Trump’s DOL has now proposed …
Michigan Minimum Wages
On March 29th, Michigan’s minimum wage will index to $9.45. Obviously, if you have employees (whether hourly or salaried) that are earning the current $9.25/hr minimum wage, you need to adjust accordingly. Where this gets tricky is when you have a commissioned salesperson (for example). Earn what you wanted based upon what you sell, and …
When Is An Unpaid Intern Not?
The US Dept of Labor (USDOL) recently scrapped the 2010-era six-factor rigid test, in favor of a seven-factor flexible test that two influential courts of appeal promulgated. Don’t be fooled though — if you’re not paying interns who are doing work that you’d otherwise be paying a real employee (or real vendor or subcontractor) to …
Minimum Wage Increases for 2018
On Jan. 1, 2018, the minimum hourly wage for non-tipped employees in Michigan increases from $8.90 to $9.25 per hour. That’s a thirty-five cent increase, folks. The minimum wage for tipped employees increases by those same $0.35 to $3.52/hr from $3.38. If you have tipped employees, you should already know (but it bears reminding) that …
Packing a Punch(tuation)
You’ve probably seen clever musings about the need for commas. “Let’s eat, Grandma!” versus “let’s eat Grandma” goes from joyful to dreadful, all for want of a lowly comma. In O’Connor v. Oakhurst Dairy, the lowly comma brought down a giant. Maine’s overtime statute says that the employer doesn’t have to pay overtime for people …
Nevermind…
Remember those updates to the overtime pay threshold that we were all wringing our hands about? (It’s back here if you’d like to remember what you were supposed to remember). A few things have happened since then. One, a Texas judge issued a national injunction barring blocking the US Dept of Labor’s overtime rules from …
Post “Independents” Day housekeeping
Last week was the Independence Day holiday. We’re talking independents here. As a small business, there is a temptation to want to call all of your workers “independent contractors” to avoid the hassle of the various payroll taxes and reporting that comes with having “employees” versus 1099 independent contractors. However, both the state and (especially) the …
And the magic number is $47,476 per year
Go figure… I post on Monday that the US-DOL hadn’t yet issued the overtime rule updates, and bam! out pops the rule on Tuesday. The magic threshold is $47,476 per year, and that amount automatically indexes once every three years. The Dept of Labor blithely posits that If you need more than a simplistic meme …