The legal landscape with regard to who must be paid for their work, and what and how they must be paid is collectively shifting as a result of recent developments from the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and the federal courts. A recent decision by the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has cleared the way for employers to hire more students as unpaid interns by rejecting a rigid six-factor DOL test that had precluded virtually all unpaid internships. At the same time, though, the DOL has tightened other standards to push many more workers into the classification of employees (not freelancers or independent contractors) and the DOL projects its new proposed regulations on overtime eligibility will annually entitle millions of more employees to overtime pay. Read More
