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Blogs Employment Updates (Blog)

CHILD LABOR, MINIMUM WAGE, AND PAYCHECK DEDUCTIONS

The Atlanta Journal reports that The U.S. Department of Labor fined a Georgia restaurant chain (This Is It! BBQ and Seafood) $104,000 in back pay for improperly classified workers who should have been receiving overtime pay and fined the restaurant $1,900 for allowing minors to work longer each day than allowed by federal regulations. The employer also allegedly failed to keep required records of tips earned and hours worked.
I. CHILD LABOR HOURS

Workers under the age of 16 were allowed to work later than 9 p.m. between June 1 and Labor Day and later than 7 p.m. during other parts of the year.

Under the FLSA, permissible work hours for 14- and 15-year-olds are:

    • 3 hours on a school day;
    • 18 hours in a school week;
    • 8 hours on a non-school day;
    • 40 hours in a non-school week; and
    • Between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., except from June 1 through Labor Day, when nighttime work hours are extended to 9 p.m.

In addition to the federal FLSA requirements, child labor laws can vary from state from state.

II.  DEDUCTIONS FROM PAY
The DOL also determined that employees did not receive the minimum wage for hours worked after deductions for uniform expenses and lunch breaks were charged to employees.

Employers in any industry must be especially careful about deductions from employee paychecks for cash register shortages, deductions for uniforms and tools, damage to company property, or attempts to recover advances to the employee of vacation or sick day balances. This is often an issue in final paychecks where the employer, in an effort to recover such amounts, over-reaches with such a large deduction that the employee does not receive the minimum wage for the amount of hours worked in the last pay period.

Post by: Don Benson

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