DOL says you may have to compensate employees for time spent putting on protective equipment required by law. The new Department of Labor’s (DOL) Administrator’s Interpretation, issued by Deputy Administrator Nancy J. Leppink), concerns whether you have to pay for the time employees use to change put on and take off protective equipment required by law. It’s entitles “SUBJECT: Section 3(o) of the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C.  203(o), and the definition of clothes.” (Administrator's Interpretation No. 2010-2)   Under the Fair Labor and Standards Act, you don’t have to pay employees for their time spend changing clothes or washing at the beginning or end of each workday. But, this new Administrator’s Interpretation explains that safety equipment is going to be treated separately, and that changing into and out of protective equipment required by law is now time that your employees will be compensated for.   So, if your employees ar ...

Designing an Internship Program   Designing an Internship Program can create a great way to pave the way to create relationships with local schools and pave the way to boosting your recruiting program. It’s not uncommon for over 20% of a company’s new-hires to come from its internship program.   Then designing an internship program, several factors should be considered:   Strategic Planning Will your internship program be available year-round? Post openings at least eight weeks from the start date. Will they need workspace? Will they need computer access? What kinds of meaningful projects will they participate in?   Supervising Since internships are generally a training type of program, they will typically need a greater amount of supervision than the normal employees. Each intern will need to be welcomed to the company and taken through many of the normal employee orientation efforts, like security, facility accommodations, punch in/out pr ...

Federal Employment Posters Update – Use the new NLRA poster by June 21st to stay in compliance. Now, under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), most federal contractors and subcontractors, by law, must inform employees of their rights.    The Department of Labor's regulations implement Executive Order (E.O.) 13496 E.O. 13496 advances the Administration's goal of promoting economy and efficiency of Federal government procurement by ensuring that workers employed in the private sector and engaged in activity related to the performance of Federal government contracts are informed of their rights to form, join, or assist a union and bargain collectively with their employer. Knowledge of such basic statutory rights promotes stable labor-management relations, thus reducing costs to the Federal government.   Pursuant to Executive Order 13496 and its implementing regulations, 29 C.F.R. Part 471, Federal contractors and subcontractors, beginning on June 21, 2010, must notify employees ...

Cons of hiring an intern   Internships can be either paid or unpaid, depending on the circumstances. Keep a sharp eye on the current guidelines to stay in compliance, especially when trying to create an unpaid intern program. It’s now very difficult to create a compliant unpaid internship program. Here are a few of the cons of hiring an intern: Hiring an intern takes time. The candidate search and the interviewing and screening process can take just as much work as a full-time employee hire. Plus, the intern usually only participates in the program for a few months, lowering the return on the hiring investment your team made. Hiring an intern is usually not free. A recent flurry of political focus has clearly established that federal and state regulators are worried that companies are abusing internship programs and using them for free labor. In general, for an unpaid internship to be lawful under the FLSA, the intern must be properly classified as a "trainee" rather than an "empl ...

  Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and nonpaid internships: Quiz   The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires that nonexempt employees receive at least minimum wage for all hours worked and must also receive time-and-a-half pay for all hours worked more than 40 during the workweek.   While the FLSA doesn't define what an intern is, nor provide an exemption from minimum wages or overtime for interns, it does define an employee as "any individual employed by an employer." The definition of "employ" under the FLSA "includes to suffer or permit to work."   Under federal law, for-profit organizations must pay workers unless the position fits six criteria. The following quiz helps to illustrate the six criteria.   Would the employee be correctly classified as a “Coordinator”, “Trainee”, or “Intern”? For an unpaid internship to be lawful under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”), the intern must be classified as a “trainee&rd ...