John Thompson's
Wage and Hour Laws blog post "Should Employers Keep Time
Records For Exempt Employees?" was picked up by TLNT
on May 21, 2015.
Should an employer keep records of the time worked by employees who
qualify for a federal Fair Labor Standards Act minimum-wage and/or
overtime exemption?
At the risk of giving the proverbial "lawyer's
answer," it depends.
Is timekeeping mandatory?
First, it is necessary to know whether timekeeping is required for
some reason under the particular exemption being relied upon. If
the employee is exempt only from the FLSA's overtime
requirement, for example, then an accurate record of all his or her
hours worked is still necessary in order to ensure compliance with
that law's minimum-wage provision.
It might also be that such a record is essential for purposes of
determining whether the applicable exemption itself is being
properly maintained.
As an illustration, consider the
FLSA's Section 7(i) overtime exception for commission-paid
employees of a retail or service establishment, which requires that
a worker's regular hourly rate of pay for an overtime work week
must be more than 1.5 times the FLSA's minimum wage. Without
accurate hours-worked information, an employer cannot know for sure
whether this condition has been met. Consequently, the
recordkeeping requirements for Section 7(i) incorporate by
reference
the general FLSA timekeeping obligation.
To read the full article, please visit
TLNT.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
