The U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Wage and Hour Division (WHD) – the federal agency responsible for enforcing the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) – has issued another new batch of informal opinion letters interpreting the law this year.
Of the four letters made public by the agency in this latest release, there are two that are likely to be of some interest to many employers. In the first, WHD addresses the so-called “80/20 Rule” regarding the method of compensating tipped employees who perform related non-tip generating duties. In the second, the agency discusses what it considers to be a reasonable relationship between the actual earnings and the guaranteed earnings when a salaried exempt employee is paid additional hourly compensation. The other two letters deal with much narrower issues.
Copies of the two letters, discussed below, are available online.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.