President-Elect Donald Trump has made it very clear that he will repeal numerous orders and laws implemented by President Barack Obama when he takes office, and one such law may be the new federal overtime regulations that were set to go into effect on December 1, 2016. The implementation was delayed due to an injunction by a federal judge, noting that the new laws could not go into effect until a ...
Back in 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act set the guidelines for overtime pay for hourly and salaried workers. Since then, inflation and the cost of living have both increased significantly, but salaried overtime earnings has not. In order to bring overtime laws up to modern speeds, President Obama has recently signed a bill into law that will make large changes to the legislation. Come December ...
This blog has previously discussed several types of minimum benefits that the federal government requires that employers provide their employees in Oklahoma and other states. These include minimum wage, certain safety conditions in the workplace, and protection from several types of discriminatory practice. One we talked about a month ago dealt with providing the option for employees to continue ...
The past few years have brought the issue of health insurance coverage to the forefront of many people's minds. Because the great majority of workers are covered under a group insurance plans negotiated by their employers, coverage is, for many Oklahoma workers, inextricably intertwined with their jobs. But what happens when a person loses his or her job? Does he or she lose not only wages, but ...
Oklahoma residents may have heard of the energy company Haliburton, which has been in the news for various reasons in the past, not all of which were positive. In another example of negative publicity, the company has reportedly settled a claim with the U.S. Department of Labor for millions of dollars due to running afoul of the country's federal wage and hour laws. Previous posts here have ...
Oklahoma residents are likely familiar with polygraph technology, if only from television cop and spy shows. This supposed 'lie detector' purports to be able, in the hands of a trained operator, to differentiate between a person answering questions truthfully and the same person being untruthful. It does this by allowing comparison of 'baseline' biomedical readings such as heart rate and blood ...
The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) is tasked with enforcing the laws and regulations that govern employer-employee relationships. As such, the department sometimes issues clarifications or guidance with regard to how it will interpret those laws and regulations. A recent publication by the DOL has done just that for the definition of the word "employee," and Oklahoma businesses and workers may ...
As any Oklahoma resident who has worked for someone else knows, receiving that first paycheck can be a little of a mixed blessing. While it's usually good to receive compensation for your hard work, there is often a little dismay at the fact that the amount listed under "gross wages" can differ substantially from that listed as "net wages." Gross wages are, of course, the basic amount of your pay ...
The past few years have brought the issue of health insurance coverage to the forefront of many people's minds. Because the great majority of workers are covered under a group insurance plans negotiated by their employers, coverage is, for many Oklahoma workers, inextricably intertwined with their jobs. But what happens when a person loses his or her job? Does he or she lose not only wages, but ...
For many high school students in Oklahoma and the rest of the United States, it is a rite of passage: the summer job. Whether in a retail outlet in the local mall, a food service worker in a fast food joint or a lifeguard at a beach or swimming pool, many teenagers use the opportunity to increase their independence from their parents by earning their own wages. More recently, during economically ...
