Proposed Changes to the FLSA Overtime Exemption Salary Level
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orPlease either Join!
orFrom the White House Briefing Room on April 27
Today, President Biden is issuing an executive order requiring federal contractors to pay a $15 minimum wage to hundreds of thousands of workers who are working on federal contracts. These workers are critical to the functioning of the federal government: from cleaning professionals and maintenance workers who ensure federal employees have safe and clean places to work, to nursing assistants who care for the nation’s veterans, to cafeteria and other food service workers who ensure military members have healthy and nutritious food to eat, to laborers who build and repair federal infrastructure.
This executive order will:
Increase the hourly minimum wage for federal contractors to $15. Starting January 30, 2022 all agencies will need to incorporate a $15 minimum wage in new contract solicitations, and by March 30, 2022, all agencies will need to implement the minimum wage into new contracts. Agencies must also implement the higher wage into existing contracts when the parties exercise their option to extend such contracts, which often occurs annually.
Continue to index the minimum wage to an inflation measure so that every year after 2022 it will be automatically adjusted to reflect changes in the cost of living.
Eliminate the tipped minimum wage for federal contractors by 2024. Federal statute allows employers of tipped workers to pay a sub-minimum wage as long as their tips bring their wage up to the level of the minimum wage. The Obama-Biden executive order raised the wages for tipped workers, but didn’t completely phaseout the subminimum wage for these workers. This executive order finishes that work and ensures tipped employees working on federal contracts will earn the same minimum wage as other employees on federal contracts.
Ensure a $15 minimum wage for federal contract workers with disabilities. To ensure equity, similar to the Obama-Biden minimum wage executive order for federal contractors, this executive order extends the required $15 minimum wage to federal contract workers with disabilities.
Restore minimum wage protections to outfitters and guides operating on federal lands by revoking President Trump’s executive order 13838 “Exemption From Executive Order 13658 for Recreational Services on Federal Lands.”
This order will build on the Obama-Biden Executive Order 13658, issued in February 2014, requiring federal contractors to pay employees working on with federal contracts $10.10 per hour, subsequently indexed to inflation. The minimum wage for workers performing work on covered federal contracts is currently $10.95 per hour and tipped minimum wage is $7.65 per hour.
This executive order will promote economy and efficiency in federal contracting, providing value for taxpayers by enhancing worker productivity and generating higher-quality work by boosting workers’ health, morale, and effort. It will reduce turnover, allowing employers to retain top talent and lower the costs associated with recruitment and training. It will reduce absenteeism, a change that has been linked to higher productivity, not just by the employees who are more present, but by their co-workers, too. And, it will reduce supervisory costs. One recent study focusing on warehouse workers and customer service representatives at an online retailer found that raising hourly wages by $1 yields a return of approximately $1.50 through increased productivity and reduced costs. As a result of raising the minimum wage, the federal government’s work will be done better and faster.
At the same time, the executive order ensures that hundreds of thousands of workers no longer have to work full time and still live in poverty. It will improve the economic security of families and make progress toward reversing decades of income inequality. Extensive, high-quality research shows that higher minimum wages have the intended effect of raising wages without significantly reducing employment outcomes. Higher minimum wages increase earnings growth for workers at the bottom of the income distribution, and those gains persist for years. A higher minimum wage, and an elimination of the tipped minimum wage, will benefit many women and people of color who likely have children and are the breadwinners in their households. It will help improve the economic security of their families and narrow racial and gender disparities in income. In addition to directly lifting the wages of hundreds of thousands of contract workers, the executive order will have impacts beyond federal contracting, as competitors in the same labor markets as federal contractors may increase wages, too, as they seek to compete for workers. Employers may seek to raise wages for workers earning above $15 as they try to recruit and retain talent. And, research shows that when the minimum wage is increased, the workers who benefit spend more, a dynamic that can help boost local economies.
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division and the Federal Acquisition and Regulatory Council will engage in rulemaking to implement and enforce this Executive Order.
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orFrom Seyfarth on September 22, 2020
DOL Proposes Its First-Ever Interpretation on Independent Contractor vs. Employee
By: Noah A. Finkel, Camille A. Olson, Louisa J. Johnson, and John R. Skelton
For decades, companies have wrestled with whether certain workers must be treated as employees subject to various employment laws and company rules or whether they are appropriately classified as independent contractors with different terms of engagement, work, and pay and tax consequences. Amid a changing economy and evolving business models, companies continue to consider the application of an alphabet soup of federal employment statutes plus the laws of the states in which they do business, many of which contain different definitions of “employee” and conversely “independent contractor,” few of which provide clear guidance on how to meet the definition of independent contractor status.
All recipients of payments from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Provider Relief Fund (PRF) are required to comply with the reporting requirements described in the Terms and Conditions and specified in future directions issued by the Secretary.
Providers that received more than $10,000 in grants will have to report on how they spent funds on coronavirus-related expenses and lost revenue in 2020 by Feb. 15, 2021. If providers do not spend all their grant funds by the end of 2020, they will be required to submit a final report on the remaining funds by July 31, 2021.
Any recipient of PRF payments may be subject to auditing to ensure the accuracy of the data submitted to HHS for payment. Any recipients identified as having provided inaccurate information to HHS will be subject to payment recoupment and other legal action.
For more details, please refer to the Terms and Conditions associated with each payment distribution and the Reporting Requirements and Auditing FAQs.
In New York, New York, from March 1 to May 31, 2020, 201 102 individuals were diagnosed with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), resulting in 51 085 hospitalizations and 16 834 deaths.1 The Fire Department of the City of New York (FDNY), the largest in the US, responds to nearly 1.5 million emergency medical calls per year in a city of more than 8.4 million people. Active paid FDNY responders include 4408 emergency medical service (EMS) responders and 11 230 firefighters. These FDNY responders are required to don personal protective equipment before patient contact per US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.2 In this cohort study, we compared medical leave of FDNY responders during the pandemic with prior years.
Prezant DJ, Zeig-Owens R, Schwartz T, et al. Medical Leave Associated With COVID-19 Among Emergency Medical System Responders and Firefighters in New York City. JAMA Netw Open. 2020;3(7):e2016094. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.16094
Days after announcing plans for Stay at Home 2.0, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu announced the allocation of $40 million in aid for communities across the state dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic…
Also using the CARES Act funding, a stipend for hazard pay is being made available to police officers, firefighters, EMS personnel and correctional officers. Full-time workers will receive $300 a week, while part-time workers receive $150 a week.
The Department of Treasury has announced that the $350 billion appropriated under the CARES Act for the Paycheck Protection Program has been exhausted. However, Congressional leaders are currently negotiating an economic stimulus package to act as a bridge between the CARES Act and the next comprehensive package stimulus package. A core provision of the bridge package is an allocation of an additional $250 billion for the Paycheck Protection Program. If your operation is in the process or plans to apply for a loan under the Paycheck Protection Program, you should move forward with your efforts. The AAA is advocating that the bridge package or next comprehensive package include more funding for ambulance services.