New DOL wage and hour opinion letter.

On March 6, 2009, the United States Department of Labor (DOL) released two Opinion Letter FLSA2009-16 which approved “compressed work schedule” by employers. although at first glance this opinion letter may seem to undermine the single workweek rule of Fair Labor Standards Act, in reality the specific situation addressed by the opinion does not run afoul of FLSA as the work performed on Fridays under the particular employer’s plan gets split between two workweeks and therefore, the employee is only working 40 hours each workweek. The bad news for employees is that DOL seems to be open to employers coming up with creative schemes to avoid payment of overtime. It is incumbent upon employee’s rights attorneys to challenge any scheme which seeks to circumvent FLSA or California law by skillfully manipulating the workweek rules.