The Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD) announced recently that it will resume the longstanding practice of issuing policy guidance in the form of written opinion letters prepared in response to specific questions from stakeholders on the laws that WHD enforces, including the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA).
In 2010, the Obama Administration’s Labor Department (DOL) announced that it would no longer issue opinion letters to answer questions from interested parties about specific compliance scenarios, and instead would begin providing general interpretations of the law through periodic publication of so-called “administrator interpretations.”
In apparently scrapping the administrator interpretations in favor of reinstating opinion letters, Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta said that he hopes the agency can help foster a “clearer understanding” of the laws enforced by WHD.
Copies of WHD opinion letters, as well as other types of guidance released by the agency, are available here.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.