New Overtime Rule Proposed
The Department of Labor (DOL) has now issued its proposed overtime rule under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
Since 2004, in order to qualify as “exempt” under FLSA’s overtime requirements for executives, administrative employees, and professional employees, an employee must perform certain specified duties and be paid an annual salary of at least $23,600 (or $455 per week).
Under the Obama administration, the DOL proposed doubling the minimum annual salary to $47,476 (or $913 per week), but just before the rule was to take effect, a court ruled that the DOL had exceeded its rulemaking authority.
The new proposed rule raises the salary threshold from its current $23,600 to $35,308 (or $679 per week).
This means that all employees earning less $35,308 a year will be owed overtime for hours worked in excess of 40 each week. Above this salary level, an employee will be exempt so long as the job-duty requirements are met.
The proposed rule is expected to take effect in January 2020, though once it is published in the Federal Register, the public will have 60 days to submit comments.
Additional information about the proposed rule is available on the DOL’s website.
Because the new rule is likely to take effect in less than a year, every employer should begin reviewing the status of its employees and creating a plan for compliance with the new rule when it takes effect.
Discrimination Based on Non-Religion
The City Council in Portland, Oregon, recently passed an ordinance giving atheists and agnostics protection from discrimination. Madison, Wisconsin, enacted a similar ordinance in 2015.
Portland’s Civil Rights code already prohibits discrimination based on race, religion, age, and disability, but many believed that nonreligious people were not adequately protected.
The ordinance now provides that “in addition to any other definition provided by law, the term ‘religion’ used herein expressly includes non-religion, such as atheism, agnosticism, and non-belief in God or gods as has been recognized by the courts.”
The new ordinance takes effect on March 29th.
Strict Liability in Washington for Employees’ Discriminatory Conduct
In January, in a case called Floeting v. Group Health Cooperative, the Washington Supreme Court held that public accommodations employers are strictly liable for their employees’ discriminatory conduct.
In other words, an employer is liable if its employee unlawfully discriminates against someone, whether or not the employer has done anything wrong. That is, an employer may be liable even if it has properly trained and supervised its employees.
Under the applicable law, places of public accommodation include all facilities used by the public, such as stores, hotels, schools, medical offices, banks, gas stations, salons, amusement parks, movie theaters, concert halls and sports facilities.
While providing employees with appropriate anti-discrimination training and establishing policies to identify and address potential problems as soon as possible will not protect an employer from liability under Washington State law, it will reduce the odds that an employee will violate anti-discrimination laws.
In addition, all Washington employers should contact their insurance agents to make sure they have appropriate insurance coverage for their employees’ actions.
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Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions about employment law, including overtime and discrimination laws.
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash
