Call it the “Final Rule” that isn’t, as the Department of Labor has now delayed the implementation of its Final Rule on tip pooling under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The Tip Regulations Final Rule was just finalized in late December and was set to become effective on March 1, 2021. However, in one…
Read More »Democratic representatives in Congress made good on promises to file legislation increasing the federal minimum wage this week with The Raise the Wage Act of 2021 being officially filed. As we know there was much talk during the campaign on the democratic side – from President Biden as well as several reps and senators –…
Read More »Underscoring the importance of who’s calling the shots at the NLRB, DOL and other federal departments during the transition from the Trump to the Biden administration, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) this week announced that it was withdrawing three opinion letters that address compliance issues related to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The…
Read More »With the signing of H.5250, the omnibus Economic Stimulus bill on January 5, the last day of the legislative session, our decade-long effort to correct the Massachusetts tip pooling law finally bore fruit. Governor Charlie Baker last week signed the legislation into law including a critical provision amending the statutory definition of wait staff employee…
Read More »The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has issued its long-awaited Final Rule addressing who may share tips under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and the circumstances under which employers may use a tip credit. It will become effective on March 1, 2021, 60 days after publication in the Federal Register. The Final Rule implements a 2018 amendment…
Read More »Almost a full year and a half ago, the US Department of Labor (DOL) officially rid the federal regulatory bureaucracy of the so-called 80/20 Rule, which governed minimum wage calculations and requirements for tipped employees when they perform ‘non-tip’ functions. Since then however, individual states have sought to adopt their own versions of the 80/20…
Read More »The New Jersey Department of Labor (NJDOL) has proposed new regulations that would revise the definition of “wages” in the Garden State to exclude “tips” from an employer’s obligation relating minimum wages. Under the proposed regulations, a “tipped employee is any employee engaged in an occupation in which he or she customarily and regularly receives…
Read More »As always seems to be the case, there’s much happening on a broad array of issues in New York. First off just last week, Cuomo gave his approval and signed a new law that will give some small businesses the right to cure a default and thereby avoid costly fines in many regulatory first-offense cases.…
Read More »Two federal agencies this week again extended the public comment period on pending regulations. The comment period on the proposed DOL amended tip-pooling rule, which was scheduled to end this past Monday was extended by the Wage and Hour Division due to an outage on the federal website, www.Regulations.gov. After the outage was resolved, the…
Read More »As more states and localities have rushed to mandate higher wages, paid leave benefits and predictive scheduling (Fair Workweek laws), many business interests and economic-focused organizations have cautioned about the impact these mandates may have on business over time. It would appear that those cautions are starting to come to fruition if one looks more…
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