Category: Employment Rights

FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT-BONUSES-THIRD PARTIES PROVIDING BONUSES Secretary, United States Dept of Labor v. Bristol Excavating, et al., 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 24767 (3d Cir. August 20, 2019) Jordan, C.J.  This case presents a matter of first impression: whether, within the meaning of the Fair Labor Standards Act (the "FLSA" or "Act"), 29 U.S.C. § 203 et. seq., an employer must treat bonuses provided by third parties as "remuneration for employment" when calculating employees' overtime rate of pay. Under the FLSA's overtime provisions, id. § 207, employers must pay employees one-and-a-half times their "regular rate" of pay for all hours worked above a forty-hour work week. 29 U.S.C. § 207(a). "[R]egular rate" is defined as including "all remuneration for employment paid to, or on behalf of, the employee," subject to eight enumerated exemptions. Id. § 207(e)(1)-(8). But "remuneration for employment" is not defined in the overtime provisions or elsewhere in the Act. The Department of Labor, despite decades of enforcing the FLSA, has only recently discovered in that 80-year-old statute a basis for asserting that employers are bound to include bonuses from third parties in the regular rate of pay when calculating overtime pay, regardless of what the employer and employee…

The question is whether the trial court wrongfully dismissed Mr. Stewart's case determining a question of fact whether a licensed firearm in a personal vehicle glove compartment is located on Mr. Stewart's or Fed Ex's property.  Firearms are prohibited by the employer.  The facts alleged in the complaint do not establish that Fed Ex required the employee to commit a crime, preventing him from complying with a statutory imposed duty, discharged him in violation of the statute or otherwise terminated him in violation of a public policy that "is so obviously for or against public health, safety, morals or welfare that there is a virtual unanimity of opinion in regard to it."  At 429.  Accordingly, Pennsylvania law does not permit recovery on the facts claimed by the former employee here.