Womble Employment Law Blog

As businesses move closer to planning their 2020 fiscal year budgets and considering pay increases, they should keep in mind that proposed overtime regulations are nearing final publication by the U.S. Department of Labor.  The new regulations will impact the so-called "white collar" overtime exemptions for executive, administrative, professional, and highly compensated employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act ("FLSA").  If the regulations become final in 2020 as expected, they will increase the minimum compensation levels required for those workers to be classified as exempt from overtime. Workers who do not meet the higher compensation levels cannot be classified as exempt from overtime under the FLSA.  So, the new regulations may result in the need for businesses to give pay increases to some workers to keep their overtime exemptions in place, or otherwise prepare to pay overtime to workers who no longer meet the minimum compensation levels. The new regul

(Winston-Salem, NC)  For the eleventh year in a row, John Pueschel of Womble Bond Dickinson’s Winston-Salem office hosted the 2019 Legal Update for the Winston-Salem Chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management at the Firm’s Winston-Salem office. Over 50 HR professionals of clients and local businesses attended. The event provided information and best practices on legal issues of particular interests to HR professionals. Womble Bond Dickinson attorneys led many of these sessions, which included: Internal Investigations, led by Womble Bond Dickinson attorney Kurt Stakeman and J.T. Moser , Director of Enterprise Risk and Corporate Investigations at Wake Forest University Health Sciences; Womble Bond Dickinson attorney Gemma Saluta , who is a Board-certified workers’ compensation specialist, facilitated a Q&A session with Industrial Commission Deputy Commissioner Michael Silver ; EEOC Re quest for Collection of Pay Data, presented by Womble Bond Dickinson attorney

In a unanimous decision, the U.S. Supreme Court recently clarified that the requirement that a plaintiff exhaust his/her administrative remedies before filing a discrimination claim under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act is a mandatory claim-processing rule, and not a jurisdictional requirement. The decision increases the importance of raising the defense of failure to exhaust administrative remedies early in employment litigation, so as to avoid a potential waiver of the defense. Under Title VII, which is the core, federal anti-discrimination law, employees and job applicants are required to first file a charge of discrimination with the EEOC and allow the agency to investigate before filing a lawsuit. This is commonly referred to as exhausting one’s administrative remedies. The EEOC charge must be filed within 180 days of when the alleged discrimination took place (or 300 days if a state or local agency enforces a law that prohibits employment discrimination on the same basis).