Legal Implications for Human Resource Management
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Touro University International
Legal Implications for Human Resource Management
MGT 516
Module 1 CASE
MGT 516 CASE 1- M.Joiner
In your opinion, do you think that both of these laws are as effective today as they were at the time they were passed? What recommendations would you make to update and improve both laws?
The Fair Labor Standards have changed tremendous since it
have been implemented. It has implemented changes and
benefits to help the working society. This new act has
proven to be a success to our working society with these
guidelines that have been set by the Fair Labor standards.
Fair Labor Standards is very effective today, although the
need for revision to meet the 21st century is a working
progress.
The FLSA dates back to 1938, and in many areas has had
little to no update since that time. It was originally
enacted in 1938 during the Depression and applied only to
private sector employees. It establishes a nationwide
minimum wage, and with limited exceptions requires that all
non-exempt employees be paid overtime at the rate of one
and a half times the employees regular rate of pay for all
hours worked in excess of forty in a given seven day
work week. In recent years, it has been acknowledged that
many of the Acts provisions meet neither the current needs
or desires of employers or employees. However, the
political reality of making changes to this fundamental
wage-hour law has been difficult. The U.S. Department of
Labor had to publish a proposal to modernize its 50-year-
old regulations defining laws and regulation of the Fair
Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Those proposed changes include
revising laws and regulations to better correspond to 21st
century workplace realities.
At a conference on “Workplace of the Future,” also held in
Washington, Victoria Lipnic, Assistant Secretary of
Employment Standards at the Department of Labor, noted the
need to update many FLSA Regulations. The Department of
Labor also is focused on changing so-called “white-collar”
exemptions from overtime pay in the wage-hour laws. The
“white-collar” exemptions include the executive,
administrative and professional exemptions to the FLSAs
minimum wage and overtime pay requirements. Toward this
end, the Department of Labor recently held a series of
meetings that included both employer associations and
unions. The Department is attempting to clarify and
simplify the Acts Regulations. The Labor Department is
working on overhauling the Field Operations Manual used by
its investigators in conducting workplace investigations.
COBRA is an acronym for the Consolidated Budget
Reconciliation Act. Budget reconciliation Acts used to be
an accounting exercise by Congress — with pages and pages
of columns and columns of numbers. One day in 1985,
lawmakers discovered that they could use a Budget
Reconciliation Act to make law. The COBRA law, first
enacted in 1985, has been amended by subsequent tax bills
and other legislation, most importantly the Health
Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). These
“COBRA” health care continuation requirements — were
enacted as part of the Consolidated Omnibus Budget
Reconciliation Act of 1985 – generally entitle employees as
well as covered spouses and dependents) to extend (at their
own expense) their employer-provided health care coverage
for a period of time.