Employers can take steps to prevent regular rate wage mistakes, according to attorneys from Fisher Phillips.
“Long-term care providers must remember that the Department of Labor construes the regular rate exclusions narrowly in favor of employees, so these employers should make sure that each criteria for every statutory exclusion is satisfied,” Susan Maupin Boone, a partner at Fisher Phillips and co-author of a recent article in Employee Benefit Plan Review, told the McKnight’s Business Daily.
The DOL’s Wage and Hour Division published a final rule on the regular rate in late 2019, which “gave employers the freedom to more easily offer perks and benefits to their employees without running afoul of federal wage and hour law,” according to Boone and co-authors. Ambiguity in the final rule led to ongoing compliance challenges, they noted.
The regular rate applies not only to an employee’s take-home pay, but also to non-discretionary bonuses, commissions, payments for undesirable shifts or duties “and some non-cash payments depending on the circumstances,” the authors wrote.
“To avoid missteps and becoming the target of a DOL investigation, long-term care providers should consider conducting a self-audit of their regular rate practices to confirm that their real-life practices match their overtime and regular rate policies [and] ensure they have accurate documentation of related timekeeping and payroll records and that they are offering perks and benefits to their employees...
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