Wage and Hour Law Under the FLSA

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) applies to virtually all public and private employers, and is chock- full of rules about everything from the minimum wage to overtime pay. Along with these rules come exceptions and exemptions, and myriad expectations as to what wages must be paid and how. In short, the FLSA has and continues to be a source of great confusion to many employers. But ignoring it does not make it go away.

The United States Department of Labor (USDOL) is taking an increasingly active role in ensuring compliance with all aspects of the FLSA, including proper classification of workers as either independent contractors or employees, proper classification of employees as either exempt or non-exempt from minimum wage and overtime requirements and what constitutes compensable work time, to name just a few. What’s more, the United States Department of Labor over the last several years has begun to collaborate with some of their state counterparts. Why is that? The reason is because failure to properly classify and pay workers means less payroll withholding, which in turn means less revenue going to the federal (and state) government coffers.