There are three major “white-collar” exemptions to the federal overtime rules that are, to some employers, a bit confusing to say the least.  One of them — the “executive” exemption — is mistakenly understood to just include, well, senior executives of a company.

A new case out by the Second Circuit (Ramos v. Baldor

The U.S. Supreme Court this morning ruled, 5-4, that pharmaceutical representatives are “outside salesmen” under the Fair Labor Standards Act.  In plain English, this now means that those representatives are now considered exempt from overtime.

Supreme Court

This decision is a big victory for pharmaceutical companies who have been

The bill's anti-retaliation provisions appear to apply to all "employees".

The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday heard arguments over whether pharmaceutical sales reprsentatives were properly classified as exempt (from overtime) because they fall within the “outside sales” exemption of the nation’s wage & hour laws.

The plaintiffs said that they were

As expected, the United States Department of Labor today released its proposed changes to the companionship and live-in worker regulations under the Fair Labor Standards Act.  What was unknown was how significant the proposed changes would be.

The short answer: Pretty significant.  The regulations substantially limit the companionship exemption under wage & hour laws to

As employers in Connecticut know, state and federal laws differ when it comes to paying overtime. Some employees (like computer professionals) are exempt from overtime obligations under federal law, but not under state law.

The new Paid Sick Leave bill just makes a mess of this distinction even further.

How?

Well, the definition of “service

Once again, the Connecticut Law Tribune has compiled an excellent series of articles on labor and employment law topics for its quarterly supplement which you can view here.

In it, my colleague, Joshua Hawks-Ladds, has a great article on the domestic service worker exemption under various wage and hour laws.   As he