Overtime lawsuits continue to spiral out of control across the country, striking fear into the hearts of employers both big (a major computer manufacturer just got hit with a multimillion-dollar lawsuit by its IT workers in California) and small (a Pennsylvania publishing company recently settled with 10 white collar employees seeking back overtime). Plus, federal and state regulators may target you for violating their overtime rules. The U.S. Department of Labor hauled in $220 million in back wages last year alone after digging into more than 30,000 cases around the nation.
Given the complexities of wage and hour regulations, it’s very easy for employers to make honest mistakes along the way. You may miscalculate regular rates for overtime, for example, or you might use outdated job titles and descriptions in classifying workers as exempt from overtime. With fines, penalties, and settlements, however, even the smallest errors can snowball quickly into extremely expensive (and embarrassing) disasters for your organization.
Order this in-depth audio conference recording, as our expert speaker - an experienced employment attorney who counsels employers around the country on wage and hour issues - explains the most common causes for overtime lawsuits. We’ll cover everything from auditing your job descriptions and preventing “unscheduled” overtime claims to classifying your employees correctly from the start. You’ll learn practical strategies you can put in place immediately to protect yourself against overtime litigation.
You and your colleagues will learn:
- The steps you should take right now to prevent overtime-pay lawsuits
- How to apply the complicated rules governing exempt/non-exempt worker classification and overtime pay
- Why it’s not smart to rely too much on job titles and descriptions to determine a worker’s exempt status (and how to audit those titles and descriptions in search of potential overtime problems)
- How to properly calculate the regular rate as the basis for overtime pay - what it includes, and what may be excluded
- Why you should never assume that all salaried employees are automatically exempt - and how you can use the duties tests to classify these workers properly
- What the federal wage and hour rules say about paying for meal and rest breaks, commuting and travel time, on-call time, and training sessions and classes
- How you can prevent “unscheduled” overtime hours claimed by your workers
- What you can do to correct overtime errors without compounding your liability
This audio conference was recorded on Wednesday, October 22, 2008
About Your Speaker:
Margaret J. Grover, Esq., is the lead partner in the employment and labor practice group at the Los Angeles and San Francisco offices of Haight Brown & Bonesteel, LLP. She focuses her practice exclusively on employment counseling and litigation and regularly advises clients on a wide range of employment issues. She also has substantial experience in all phases of employment litigation and has successfully defended employers in claims for wage and hour class actions, discrimination and harassment claims, and other matters. A former law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, she is a frequent speaker and author on employment law issues. She earned her law degree at Case Western Reserve University.
Approved for Recertification Credit
This program has been approved for 1.5 recertification credit hours toward PHR, SPHR, and GPHR recertification through the Human Resource Certification Institute (HRCI). For more information about certification or recertification, please visit the HRCI home page at www.hrci.org.
