It’s hard getting excited about joint employment.
In fact, it’s pretty yawn-inducing. (Seriously, get a cup of coffee before reading this.)
But a few weeks back, the Department of Labor issued some new guidance on the topic that has been making the rounds
Whatever happened to summer vacation? You remember, that downtime, when nothing much happened?
First, there were new proposed OT rules. Then, word came out EARLY (I got an alert at 6a!) today that the U.S. Department of Labor issued new “guidance” that will
So if last Tuesday’s post about the latest Connecticut Supreme Court decision on travel time was for employers, this post is for the ones who love the nuances of the law.
Dan Klau on his Appealingly Brief blog did a deep dive into the decision. And it wasn’t pretty.
The issue Dan highlights is this: The Connecticut Department of Labor’s (“DOL”) interpretation of its own regulation on travel time was first rejected because that interpretation had not been time-tested and was not the product of formal rule-making procedures.
But it was also rejected because the Court said the agency’s interpretation was also not reasonable. Dan questions this:
The DOL based its interpretation of its regulation on a 1995 opinion letter of the United States Department of Labor concerning travel time under the federal Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947. The DOL expressly referenced that letter in a written guide it published, “A Guide to Wage and Workplace Standards.” (The link is to the 2014 revision, which appears to contain the same relevant text (see p. 38) at issue in Sarrazin.) The Court noted that Congress had rejected that position (on policy grounds) in 1996, “yet the department’s handbook inexplicably fails to acknowledge the questionable history of the 1995 opinion letter. . . .” This, according to the Court, is what made the DOL’s interpretation of its own regulation unreasonable.
I fail to see why the DOL’s statement that it interpreted its own regulation in accord with the 1995 opinion letter means that its interpretation is “unreasonable.” It seems to me that the question of reasonableness turns on the “fit” between the 1995 opinion letter and the text of the regulation, not on whether Congress, as a policy matter, disagreed with the 1995 opinion letter. Congress’s intentions are certainly relevant to federal law, but not to the reasonableness of the DOL’s interpretation of its own regulation. Employment lawyers, what say you?
There’s more, of course, to this story. It actually starts with a 1994 US Department of Labor Opinion letter which ruled that the time spent by an employee traveling from home to the first work assignment, or returning home from the last assignment, in an employer provided vehicle was similar to that of traveling between jobs during the day and therefore represented a principal activity, which must be compensated. No compensation would be required in cases where employees used their own personal vehicles.Continue Reading CTDOL’s Interpretation of Travel Time Not “Reasonable”; What Happens Next?
So, four months in, how is Connecticut Paid Sick Leave (PSL) working out? Well, for towns, not so well as this recent article pointed out.
But as Connecticut employers start running through the issues, some novel and unforseen issues keep popping up. I’ll address
Let the politicians and the newspapers cite a new Second Circuit decision as being important for "saving jobs" in Connecticut. It makes for good press, but for employers, the decision is more important for a different reason than highlighted in the press: The Court has weakened one of the arguments that employers use to support their
The United States Department of Labor today released a new "Administrator’s Interpretation" concerning the donning and doffing (or, in plain English, typically putting on and taking off) of clothing at the beginning and end of each workday. You can download the notice here. Under the FLSA, “changing clothes or washing at the beginning or
The United State Department of Labor has begun issuing administrator interpretations, which are intended to provide guidance to employers and employees on various issues from time to time. They have not been used n the recent past, but a new one yesterday shows that this is changing.
Specifically, the DOL has released an interpretation