A Comprehensive Guide to the Fair Labor Standards Act for Public Employers, 2024 Update

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) was America’s first major worker protection law, and it remains one of the most important safeguards for employees to this day. Since the late 1930s, the FLSA has mandated that employers pay employees at least the federal minimum wage and pay a premium rate of one-and-one-half times an employee’s regular rate of pay for every hour over forty hours logged by the employee in a seven-day workweek. 

It is important that employers, both public and private, have a thorough understanding of the FLSA. Paying employees correctly is necessary both because it helps employers attract and retain good employees and because mistakes may cause an employer to find itself on the hook for as much as two years of back overtime for each employee who has not been paid correctly. 

A Comprehensive Guide to the Fair Labor Standards Act for Public Employers, 2024 Update lays out the rules governing FLSA-exempt status, the kinds of activities for which employees must be paid (compensable, or “comp,” time), and overtime. Employers will find the book’s discussion of allowable deductions from employee pay particularly helpful, along with its in-depth coverage of issues involving comp time, including on-call time, travel time, training time, and gap time. Special attention is paid to the issues and problems with which North Carolina public employers routinely grapple.