Category: Workplace Rights
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Workers who think overtime is missing from a W-2 are told to ask for a corrected form, not to redo the math.
Late in tax season, a familiar complaint starts showing up in payroll and tax-prep offices alike: an employee’s last pay stub of the year shows thousands of dollars in overtime pay, but the new box on the Form W-2 meant to report it for the tax deduction comes back at zero, or far lower than…
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A Labor Department proposal would rewrite who counts as an independent contractor, and workers reclassified that way would lose overtime and minimum-wage rights.
The U.S. Department of Labor wants to rewrite the rule that decides who counts as an employee and who counts as an independent contractor under federal wage law, and that single label determines who is guaranteed overtime pay and a minimum wage and who is not. The department’s Wage and Hour Division published the proposal…
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The same contractor test would be extended to family and medical leave and to farmworker protections, well beyond the wage law it was written for.
A federal proposal aimed at rewriting who counts as an employee versus an independent contractor under wage law would not stop at wage law. The Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division wants the same classification test it is proposing for the Fair Labor Standards Act to also decide who is covered under the Family…
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A Mississippi blues club will pay $35,000 over a co-owner accused of harassment
A Biloxi, Mississippi music venue has agreed to pay $35,000 to settle a federal lawsuit accusing one of its co-owners of sexually harassing an employee and accusing the company of firing her for reporting it. The case, brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against Ground Zero Biloxi LLC, is a reminder that federal harassment…
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A bottler paid $36,000 for making a worker with MS take an agility test
A soft-drink bottler in North Carolina agreed to pay $36,000 after federal regulators said it forced an employee with multiple sclerosis through an agility test that asked about her health, then fired her even after her doctor cleared her to return. The case closed last month, and it turns on a narrower question than whether…
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An employer must keep your payroll records at least four years, which matters when a paycheck comes up short
A shorted paycheck rarely gets sorted out through memory alone. It gets sorted out with paperwork: pay stubs, tax withholding forms, and the deposit records an employer used to send money to the IRS. Those documents only help a worker if they still exist somewhere, and how long they have to exist is set by…
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The government is suing Family Dollar over a manager who demanded a doctor’s note the same night
On New Year’s Eve 2024, a pregnant customer service representative at a Family Dollar store in Greenville, North Carolina called her manager to say her doctor had referred her to a high-risk clinic and told her to stay off work until an appointment three days later. According to a federal lawsuit filed against the company,…
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Federal agencies just told employers how little they owe back on a tobacco surcharge
If your paycheck has a line item docking you an extra $50 or $100 a month because you smoke, or used to, that deduction has a name: a tobacco surcharge. On August 26, 2026, the Department of Labor, the Treasury Department and the Department of Health and Human Services jointly told employers how they expect…
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A Pennsylvania brick plant faces $496,000 in proposed fines over silica dust it already knew about
Inspectors who walked through Plant 3 at Watsontown Brick Company in central Pennsylvania on February 12 found workers breathing air loaded with crystalline silica dust — the same hazard behind an incurable lung disease called silicosis. Federal investigators say the company already knew about the exposure and did not fix it or require workers to…
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A Captain D’s franchisee was fined $62,000 after a teenager was burned working a fryer
Two Beacons LLC runs eight restaurants in Tennessee and North Carolina, seven of them Captain D’s, and it just agreed to pay roughly $62,000 after federal investigators found teenage employees running kitchen equipment the law says they’re not allowed to touch. The trigger for the investigation: a minor was burned by hot grease while working…
