Department of Labor highlights more than 1,000 planned clean energy projects with potential for good-paying jobs on new interactive map WASHINGTON – The Department of Labor today announced the launch of an interactive map to help workers, unions and the public learn more about the tens of thousands of jobs being created nationwide by more than 1,000 planned clean energy projects, in line with the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to creating good jobs while tackling the climate crisis.The Inflation Reduction Act offers strong incentives for clean energy projects to create high-quality and union jobs that pay prevailing wages and use Registered Apprenticeship programs. The new map showcases clean energy projects that may be eligible for enhanced federal tax credits if they meet these requirements.“This map is a collaboration between the U.S. Department of Labor and other federal agencies to help ensure that the Biden-Harris administration’s historic climate investments create good-paying jobs,” said Acting Secretary Julie Su. “By producing new tools like this one, we are helping to facilitate partnerships between employers and unions that can yield worker-centric practices and valuable training opportunities for this wave of new clean energy jobs.”The map allows users to sort planned clean energy projects by sector and state and learn more about each project’s location, name, status and size, companies involved and the estimated number of construction jobs supporting the project. Drawn from publicly available data, the map’s information does not indicate eligibility for federal tax incentives and does not constitute federal taxpayer information.Learn more about the clean energy projects map.
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Vermont restaurant retaliated against server, underpaid workers, violated child labor provisions, US Department of Labor investigation finds MANCHESTER, NH – A Vermont restaurant server will receive $50,000 in punitive damages and $829 in back pay, after a U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division investigation found the employer retaliated against them by terminating their employment for refusing to share tips with a manager.The division found Trareeba Ltd., doing business as Colatina Exit in Bradford, Vermont, violated the Fair Labor Standards Act by unlawfully including managers in its tip pool, which invalidated the employer’s tip credit, and also failed to pay workers time and one-half their regular rates of pay for hours over 40 in a workweek. The division also determined the restaurant employed two 17-year-old delivery drivers to make time-sensitive deliveries, a violation of federal child labor regulations. In an administrative settlement with the division, Colatina Exit paid $119,605 in back wages and an equal amount in liquidated damages to 43 employees affected by the tip and overtime violations. The employer has paid the department $28,132 in civil money penalties for its child labor violations and $3,393 in penalties for the tip violations. “Colatina Exit’s illegal employment practices hurt workers and undercut law-abiding employers who treat their employees fairly. The law requires that tips go to employees, not their manager,” said Wage and Hour Division District Director Steven McKinney in Manchester, New Hampshire.“The Wage and Hour Division does not tolerate retaliation against employees who exercise their rights under the Fair Labor Standards Act and we will take all necessary action to protect workers and ensure they receive the wages they are owed,” McKinney emphasized.The FLSA prohibits employers from keeping any portion of employees’ tips for any purpose, whether directly or through a tip pool. Employers may not require workers to give their tips to the employer, a supervisor or a manager.Learn more about protections against unlawful retaliation to workers.The Department of Labor’s YouthRules! initiative promotes positive and safe work experiences for teens by providing information about protections for young workers to youth, parents, employers and educators. Through this initiative, the department and its partners promote developmental work experiences that help prepare young workers to enter the workforce. The Wage and Hour Division has also published Seven Child Labor Best Practices for Employers to help employers comply with the law. Learn more about the Fair Labor Standards Act’s child labor provisions. Workers and employers can contact the division confidentially at its toll-free number, 1-866-4-US-WAGE (487-9243). Learn more about the Wage and Hour Division, including the agency’s restaurant compliance assistance toolkit, an overview of FLSA protections for restaurant workers and Workers Owed Wages, a search tool to use if you think you may be owed back wages collected by the division. Workers and employers alike can help track their hours worked and pay by downloading the department’s Android and iOS Timesheet App for free in English or Spanish.  
http://www.dol.gov/newsroom/re....leases/whd/whd202404

Biden-Harris administration finalizes rule to increase compensation thresholds for overtime eligibility, expanding protections for millions of workers WASHINGTON – The Biden-Harris administration today announced a final rule that expands overtime protections for millions of the nation’s lower-paid salaried workers by increasing the salary thresholds required to exempt a salaried bona fide executive, administrative or professional employee from federal overtime pay requirements. Effective July 1, 2024, the salary threshold will increase to the equivalent of an annual salary of $43,888 and increase to $58,656 on Jan. 1, 2025. The July 1 increase updates the present annual salary threshold of $35,568 based on the methodology used by the prior administration in the 2019 overtime rule update. On Jan. 1, 2025, the rule’s new methodology takes effect, resulting in the additional increase. In addition, the rule will adjust the threshold for highly compensated employees. Starting July 1, 2027, salary thresholds will update every three years, by applying up-to-date wage data to determine new salary levels.“This rule will restore the promise to workers that if you work more than 40 hours in a week, you should be paid more for that time,” said Acting Secretary Julie Su. “Too often, lower-paid salaried workers are doing the same job as their hourly counterparts but are spending more time away from their families for no additional pay. That is unacceptable. The Biden-Harris administration is following through on our promise to raise the bar for workers who help lay the foundation for our economic prosperity.”The department conducted extensive engagement with employers, workers, unions and other stakeholders before issuing its proposed rule in September 2023, and considered more than 33,000 comments in developing its final rule. The updated rule defines and delimits who is a bona fide executive, administrative and professional employee exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act’s overtime protections. “The Department of Labor is ensuring that lower-paid salaried workers receive their hard-earned pay or get much-deserved time back with their families,” said Wage and Hour Administrator Jessica Looman. “This rule establishes clear, predictable guidance for employers on how to pay employees for overtime hours and provides more economic security to the millions of people working long hours without overtime pay.”Key provisions of the final rule include the following:Expanding overtime protections to lower-paid salaried workers.Giving more workers pay or valuable time back with their family: By better identifying which employees are executive, administrative or professional employees who should be overtime exempt, the final rule ensures that those employees who are not exempt receive time-and-a-half pay when working more than 40 hours in a week or gain more time with their families.Providing for regular updates to ensure predictability. The rule establishes regular updates to the salary thresholds every three years to reflect changes in earnings. This protects future erosion of overtime protections so that they do not become less effective over time.The rule’s effective date is July 1, 2024. Learn more about the department’s efforts to restore and extend overtime protections. 
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Department of Labor obtains judgment ordering contractor to pay nearly $1.2M in wages, damages, penalties for illegal employment practices WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Labor has obtained a consent judgment in federal court that orders a Virginia concrete contractor to pay nearly $1.2 million in back wages, damages and penalties after its investigation found the employer misclassified 29 employees as independent contractors and failed to pay proper overtime to its employees.The action in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria follows an investigation by the department’s Wage and Hour Division of Village Concrete Inc., a Manassas employer that allegedly misclassified the affected employees as independent contractors. By doing so, the employer failed to pay required overtime rates for hourly, day-rate and salaried workers.The division also found the company allegedly falsified records to make it appear they had paid workers overtime, wrongly categorized salaried employees as exempt from overtime and denied employees pay for distances traveled related to work. In addition, Village Concrete failed to keep accurate records of the hours employees worked and compensation the company paid them. “Misclassification denies employees access to critical benefits and protections, such as overtime, minimum wage, family and medical leave and — in some cases — safe workplaces,” explained Wage and Hour Administrator Jessica Looman. “The Wage and Hour Division will continue to make combatting misclassification a priority to protect some of the nation’s most vulnerable workers and their families from the harm it causes.” The consent judgment requires the employer to pay 81 employees $563,938 in back wages and an equal amount in liquidated damages, bars Village Concrete from future Fair Labor Standards Act violations and affirms civil money penalties of $67,473 the department assessed for the employer’s willful violations. “The Solicitor’s Office uses all available tools to address the serious workplace problem of misclassification,” said Solicitor of Labor Seema Nanda. “In this case, Village Concrete even tried to conceal its violations by falsifying records. We will use all legal tools available to us to hold employers accountable for deliberate and inexcusable attempts to obfuscate the facts, including civil monetary penalties.”Village Concrete Inc. is a contractor serving residential and commercial customers in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia.The FLSA requires that most employees in the U.S. be paid at least the federal minimum wage for all hours worked and overtime pay at not less than time and one-half their regular rate of pay for all hours worked over 40 in a workweek. It also prohibits the misclassification of employees as independent contractors.Learn more about the Wage and Hour Division, including a search tool to use if you think you may be owed back wages collected by the division. Employers and workers can call the division confidentially with questions, regardless of their immigration status. The division can speak with callers in more than 200 languages through the agency’s toll-free helpline at 866-4US-WAGE (487-9243). Help ensure hours worked and pay are accurate by downloading the department’s Android and iOS Timesheet App for free, available in English and Spanish.Su v. Village Concrete Commercial Inc., Agostinho Costa 
http://www.dol.gov/newsroom/re....leases/whd/whd202404

Biden-Harris administration announces rule to protect retirement savers’ interests by updating investment advice fiduciary definition WASHINGTON – The Biden-Harris administration announced today that the U.S. Department of Labor has finalized its Retirement Security Rule to protect the millions of workers who are saving for retirement diligently and rely on advice from trusted professionals on how to invest their savings. This final rule will achieve this by updating the definition of an investment advice fiduciary under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act and the Internal Revenue Code.The final rule and related amended prohibited transaction exemptions require trusted investment advice providers to give prudent, loyal, honest advice free from overcharges. These fiduciaries must adhere to high standards of care and loyalty when they recommend investments and avoid recommendations that favor the investment advice providers’ interests — financial or otherwise — at the retirement savers’ expense. Under the final rule and amended exemptions, financial institutions overseeing investment advice providers must have policies and procedures to manage conflicts of interest and ensure providers follow these guidelines.The updated definition of an investment advice fiduciary, which takes effect on Sept. 23, 2024, applies when trusted financial services providers give compensated investment advice to retirement plan participants, individual retirement account owners and plan officials responsible for administering plans and managing their assets. “America’s workers and their families rely on investment professionals for guidance as they save for retirement,” said Acting Secretary Julie Su. “This rule protects the retirement investors from improper investment recommendations and harmful conflicts of interest. Retirement investors can now trust that their investment advice provider is working in their best interest and helping to make unbiased decisions.”The rule aligns with the Biden-Harris administration’s effort to protect retirement investors and put more money into the pockets of workers and their families. While acknowledging that investment professionals deserve to be paid fairly for helping retirement investors meet their savings goals and retire with dignity, the effort seeks to prevent advice providers from putting their interests before their clients’. Recent analysis by the Council of Economic Advisers of just one investment product — fixed index annuities — suggests that conflicted advice could cost savers up to $5 billion per year. Such conflicts can reduce retirement investors’ returns and increase costs that chip away at many workers’ savings. The rule also ensures investment professionals can compete for business on a level playing field, instead of being hindered by a skewed system in which different standards exist for advice providers based on the products they recommend. Firms and investment professionals that are working hard to give advice in retirement investors’ best interest should not be penalized for responsibly managing their conflicts of interest and making prudent and loyal recommendations. Retirement investors are best protected by a uniform and protective framework. The current definition of investment advice fiduciary, adopted in 1975, was written when individual retirement accounts were less common and before 401(k) plans existed. Most people relied on traditional pensions for retirement security. Today, individual plan participants and IRA owners — not professional money managers — are expected to make important, complex financial decisions, and they seek help from expert advisers, which made updating this rule necessary.“These new rules update regulations created nearly a half-century ago that simply are not providing the protections America’s workers need and deserve for their retirement savings so that they can retire with dignity,” said Assistant Secretary for Employee Benefits Security Lisa M. Gomez. “The investment landscape has changed, the retirement landscape has changed, and it is critical that our regulations are responsive to those changes so that workers can reach the secure retirement that they work for decades to finally achieve.”The department has also amended related existing administrative prohibited transaction class exemptions that are available to investment advice fiduciaries. The amendments make the exemption conditions more uniform and protective. Under ERISA and the Code, investment advice fiduciaries must avoid conflicts of interest or comply with an exemption’s conditions to receive compensation that otherwise would be prohibited. The amended exemptions require investment advice fiduciaries to provide retirement investors with advice that is prudent, loyal, honest, and free from overcharges.The Federal Register will publish the final rule and amended prohibited transaction exemptions on April 25, 2024. Learn more about EBSA’s final Retirement Security Rule. 
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