Now that the election is behind us, employers should
consider what they might anticipate in the field of wage-hour
law, which is already one of the largest sources of employment-law
claims. While the nature and number of the possible
developments are practically unlimited, some of the foreseeable
ones include these:
♦ The push to increase the minimum wage under
the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, which was at
fever-pitch before going dormant as the election season
approached, will now re-emerge. There will be similar efforts
under many analogous state and local laws and ordinances.
This will probably include proposals to increase the FLSA's
cash-wage requirement for tipped employees for whom employers take
that law's tip-credit. The public-relations approach will
be that this increases "the minimum wage for tipped
workers", despite the fact that the FLSA minimum wage for
tipped employees is already the same as it is for everyone
else.
