Wage, Hour & Classification Compliance

We advise Florida employers on classification, pay practices, and recordkeeping under the Fair Labor Standards Act and Florida wage law, auditing how positions are classified, how hours are captured, and how pay is calculated before a claim forces the review. Compliance work done in advance is measured in hours. The same review done under a demand letter is measured in exposure.

We look at what the job actually involves, not at what the job description says, because that is the standard a court or the Department of Labor will apply. Titles, salaries, and signed agreements do not control the outcome. The duties performed and the hours recorded do.

• Exemption Audits: reviewing salaried positions against the executive, administrative, professional, and outside sales tests to confirm each exemption holds up under the duties performed.
• Contractor Classification: assessing independent contractor relationships against the economic reality factors that federal and state agencies apply, and restructuring the arrangement where the relationship does not support the label.
• Overtime Calculation: confirming the regular rate is computed correctly, including nondiscretionary bonuses, commissions, shift differentials, and other compensation that must be folded in.
• Timekeeping Systems: evaluating how hours are recorded, rounded, and approved, and closing the gaps that create off-the-clock exposure across an entire job classification.
• Pay Practice Review: examining meal and rest deductions, travel time, training time, on-call time, and automatic deductions that quietly convert compliant pay into unpaid work.
• Policy Documentation: drafting timekeeping, overtime authorization, and complaint procedures that give the employer a record and a defense when hours are later disputed.

Classification is the single largest source of wage exposure for Florida employers, because the error repeats. When one position is misclassified, every person who held that position during the limitations period has the same claim, and the damages accumulate quietly across payroll cycles. Assistant managers, office coordinators, and technical staff draw the most scrutiny because the titles suggest authority the actual duties may not support.

We review classifications position by position, because the analysis is specific to the work performed rather than to the department or the pay grade. Two employees with identical titles can land on opposite sides of the line. The duties decide it.

• Duties Testing: comparing daily responsibilities against the regulatory criteria for each exemption rather than relying on the written job description.
• Salary Basis Compliance: confirming exempt employees are paid on a true salary basis and that deductions do not defeat the exemption for the whole classification.
• Reclassification Planning: sequencing a change from exempt to non-exempt in a way that manages both prospective compliance and the record it creates about the prior period.
• Job Description Alignment: rewriting descriptions so they reflect actual duties, which supports the classification instead of contradicting it.
• Hybrid Roles: analyzing positions that combine exempt and non-exempt work, where the exemption often turns on how the time is actually divided.

Florida sets its own minimum wage through a state constitutional amendment, and the rate steps up on a published schedule that runs above the federal floor. Employers who calculate from the federal number underpay every hour. For tipped positions the arithmetic is tighter still, because the cash wage, the tip credit, and the required notice all have to line up before the credit can be claimed at all.

We work through the tip and service charge rules in detail, because a defective tip pool or a mislabeled service charge does not simply reduce the credit. It can invalidate the credit entirely, converting the full minimum wage into a retroactive obligation for every tipped hour worked.

• Rate Tracking: confirming payroll reflects the current Florida minimum wage and the scheduled increases rather than the federal rate.
• Tip Credit Notice: documenting the notice tipped employees must receive before the employer takes any credit against the cash wage.
• Tip Pool Structure: reviewing who participates in the pool and confirming that managers, supervisors, and the house are not sharing in it.
• Service Charge Treatment: distinguishing mandatory service charges from tips and confirming they are handled correctly in the regular rate.
• Dual Jobs Analysis: assessing time tipped employees spend on non-tipped duties and whether that time can be paid at the tipped rate.

Incentive pay creates wage exposure in two directions. The plan document itself becomes a contract, so vague language about when a commission is earned turns into a dispute the moment a salesperson leaves. Separately, most nondiscretionary incentive pay has to be included in the regular rate for overtime, which means a bonus paid to a non-exempt employee retroactively raises the overtime rate for the period it covers.

We draft incentive plans that hold up on both fronts, so the plan says clearly when compensation is earned, when it is forfeited, and how it is treated for overtime purposes. A plan that is silent on those points is decided later by someone else.

• Plan Drafting: setting out earning triggers, payment timing, and forfeiture conditions in language that survives a departing employee’s claim.
• Regular Rate Inclusion: identifying which bonuses and commissions must be folded into the overtime rate and building the recalculation into payroll.
• Draw Arrangements: structuring recoverable and non-recoverable draws so that recovery does not push earnings below the applicable minimum wage.
• Chargeback Terms: defining when commissions can be reversed for returns, cancellations, or nonpayment, and what notice the employee receives.
• Plan Amendments: changing incentive terms prospectively without creating a claim for compensation employees argue was already earned.

Wage matters usually surface in one of three ways. A former employee sends a demand, the Department of Labor opens an investigation, or a single plaintiff files suit and then moves to send notice to everyone in the same position. Each of those has a short window in which the response shapes everything that follows, and each one is made worse by an incomplete or reconstructed set of time records.

We handle the response and the exposure at the same time, because a claim from one employee is almost always a question about the practice behind it. Resolving the individual matter while the underlying practice continues simply schedules the next claim.

• Damage Modeling: calculating realistic exposure across the affected classification, including liquidated damages and fee shifting, before any settlement position is taken.
• Investigation Response: managing Department of Labor document requests and interviews, and controlling the scope of what the investigation covers.
• Collective Action Defense: opposing conditional certification by showing the individualized differences among the employees the plaintiff seeks to include.
• Records Assembly: gathering time and payroll data early, since gaps in the employer’s records shift the burden toward the employee’s estimate.
• Forward Remediation: correcting the practice that produced the claim so the same exposure does not continue to accrue during the dispute.

Wage and hour compliance is operational work. It touches payroll, scheduling, job descriptions, and how supervisors approve time, and advice that ignores those systems does not get implemented. We work with owners and HR leads on what the business actually does, then adjust the practice and the paperwork together. The goal is a payroll operation that can be explained clearly to an investigator, a plaintiff’s lawyer, or a judge without reconstructing anything after the fact.

Pomeranz Law provides outside general counsel support to Florida businesses on wage, hour, and classification matters, working as ongoing counsel to the operation rather than as a firm that appears only after a demand letter arrives.

• We review classifications against the actual duties performed and tell the client plainly when a position will not hold up.
• We build timekeeping and pay practices that create a usable record, because the employer carries the proof burden when records are thin.
• We quantify exposure across the affected group before recommending a position, so settlement decisions rest on numbers rather than instinct.
• We correct the underlying practice while resolving the individual claim, which stops the same exposure from continuing to accrue.
• We work as ongoing counsel to the business, so classification questions get answered when a role is created rather than when it is challenged.