Monday morning musings for workplace watchers
Déjà Vu at WHD | Does the PRO Act Have a Pulse?
Rebecca Rainey: What’s old could one day be new again at the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, perhaps in more ways than one.
The Senate labor panel’s surprise vote to advance David Weil—on the strength of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) being absent—teed him up for the full Senate to consider whether he should return to his Obama-era post as WHD administrator.
Confirmation may not be a sure thing—Weil previously had a Sen. Joe Manchin problem. But if he returns as top U.S. wage cop, one of the immediate tests he’d face would feel like regulatory déjà vu.
The department’s wage division plans to issue a proposal in April that could expand time-and-a-half protections to more workers, an effort in which agency regulators—and, possibly, Weil—will have to navigate a 2017 ruling that invalidated his last effort to update the overtime threshold.
Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, workers are exempt from OT pay if they are salaried, make more than a certain amount of money per year, and work in a “bona fide executive, administrative, or professional capacity.”
Many attorneys say the idea behind inclusion of the salary provision is to screen out workers who clearly are due time-and-a-half pay but can’t meet other parts of the test.
The Weil-led WHD in 2016 issued a rule to raise the salary threshold to $47,476, and update it every three years based on changes in average income....
The Justice Department announced Friday International Business Machines Corp. will pay more than $17 million to resolve allegations that it violated anti-discrimination requirements in its federal...