BLR

San Francisco partner Cheryl Orr will present a webinar on preparing now for stepped-up Department of Labor enforcement. With President Obama’s proposed budget for 2011 seeking to add 100 new DOL enforcement officers and indications that the DOL will be zeroing in on whether independent contractors should be re-classified as employees, exemptions are a hot topic. Cheryl, co-chair of the firm’s Labor and Employment Practice Group, will present an in-depth webinar on how to properly audit exemption classifications and independent contractor status to determine whether the DOL would likely conclude that your workers should have been paid overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act. She will provide practical, real-life examples of how the white-collar exemptions have been improperly applied and give pointers on how to make an exemption audit run smoothly. Topics to be discussed include: the key components of a thorough exemption audit and the timeline for executing each step; how salary deductions and predetermined amounts of work and compensation may affect exemption eligibility; tell-tale signs that wording in job descriptions could fuel “white-collar” workers’ and independent contractors’ claims for unpaid overtime; and how to communicate audit findings without increasing the risk of employees claims.