DOL Aims To Curtail Overtime Abuses Through Mandatory Reporting Requirements

The U.S. Labor Department has announced its intention to issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking ("NPRM") proposing significant amendments to the FLSA recordkeeping regulations aimed at educating employees as to their eligibility for overtime. As of yet, there are scant details. But DOL says that its new rules will, among other things, seek to require employers:

• To notify workers of their FLSA rights (apparently, the longstanding requirement to display DOL's prescribed poster somehow does not accomplish this);

• To provide "information" about hours worked and wage computation; and

• To perform and document a "classification analysis" for employees who are allegedly not entitled to overtime which will require the employer to disclose this analysis to the worker, and to provide the analysis to a DOL investigator upon "request".

Stay tuned as these proposals raise a host of substantial and troubling questions and will likely be highly controversial.