Good morning,
CFOs are concerned about compliance risks. And at a time where talent, pay, and compensation are top of mind, the highest court in the U.S. is weighing in on employment laws.
“Frankly, every employer should review their wage and hour compliance on a fairly regular basis because the laws are complicated, as evidenced by this Supreme Court decision; and the laws are subject to different interpretations and change,” says Alex Granovsky, a labor and employment attorney at Granovsky & Sundaresh PLLC.
The Supreme Court ruled on Feb. 22 that Michael Hewitt, a “tool-pusher” at Helix Energy Solutions, an oil and gas company based in Houston, who earned more than $200,000 a year, still qualified for overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
The court sided with Hewitt in a 6-3 vote. From 2014 to 2017, Hewitt worked for Helix on an offshore oil rig, about 84 hours a week. He supervised 12 to 14 workers and was paid from $963 to $1,341 per day. But Hewitt didn’t receive any overtime pay.
The more than $200,000 was Hewitt’s total compensation. He wasn’t paid a salary, but was paid a day rate, Granovsky explains. The more days he worked, the more money he made, and vice versa. “In a lot of ways, if you think about it, that’s almost identical to being paid an hourly rate,” Granovsky says.
The issue that was “teed up” for the Supreme Court was “whether or not this employee, by being paid well over $200,000 a year, and being paid a day rate, met the FLSA’s...
stage at the Ninth Circuit, where pharmaceutical companies say a momentous new ruling "illustrates perfectly" the constitutional concerns of U. S. Supreme Court justices regarding FCA enforcement. ...