Issue link: http://palletcentral.uberflip.com/i/1482881
32 PalletCentral • September-October 2022 palletcentral.com • Substitute hours. Instead of paying time-and- a-half to an individual due overtime, the employer grants a day off the following week as compensation. is violates the law requiring overtime for any labor of over 40 hours in any single week. • Paycheck deductions. A business deducts employees' wages for such things as uniform costs or shrinkage. Such deductions can't be made if the individual's compensation would fall below the minimum wage or would reduce their overtime pay. Many state laws also restrict such deductions. Staying Current Employers are expected to encounter even greater challenges as regulators at the federal, state and local levels retool wage and hour regulations to reflect a greater sensitivity to employee rights. A growing number of violations have sparked criminal rather than civil actions. "If failure to pay overtime is simply a result of miscalculation or misclassification, that's a civil action rather than a criminal one," says Gregg. "In order to be a criminal action, the individual has to show intentionality. Some examples are having people work off the clock to avoid overtime, deliberately pocketing the overtime money, or doing a variety of tricks to deliberately avoid paying overtime so that people do not get what they're due." "Economic hardship caused by the pandemic caused a number of business owners to avoid paying wages in order to keep their businesses afloat," says Gregg. "In some cases, they thought, 'If I can't pay the rent and we close, I won't be able to pay anybody so everybody will lose their job.' " ey stopped overtime payments, shorted paychecks, and paid people under the table to avoid taxes. "e fact is that even if they didn't actually stuff the money in their own pockets, the wage theft was an intentional act of breaking the law," Gregg says. Flying without an adequate legal radar can result in a crash landing. "Many retailers don't understand wage and hour law and make things up as they go along," says McKenzie. "ey think everything will be okay, but sooner or later they get caught." Award-winning journalist Phillip M. Perry has published widely in the fields of business management, workplace psychology and employment law. A 20-year veteran, Perry is syndicated in scores of magazines nationwide.