Alaska Employment Law

The Alaska Department of Labor has again extended the time for comments on its proposed revisions to the Wage and Hour Act.  The new deadline is October 8th, at 4 pm.  Here are the supplemental notice and text of proposed changes.

The proposed regulations would substantively change the current law in the following ways.

Calculation of regular hourly rate.   The new regs would expressly require employers to put employment contracts in writing.  The regs don’t spell out a consequence for violating that requirement, but they implicitly call for a non-exempt employee’s salary under an oral contract to be construed as a 40-hour contract.  Proposed 8 AAC 15.100(a). 

Comp time.  Under the new regs, an employer could extend comp pay to a non-exempt employee so long as any comp time earned in overtime situations is used during the same pay period in which it was earned and is paid at the overtime rate.  Proposed  8 AAC 15.100(d)(2). 

Comp time for exempt employees has always been legal in Alaska, need not be used in the same pay period, and need not be paid at the premium rate. 

Flextime.  These proposed changes relate to the kind of flextime  that is designed for an individual employee and is subject to DOL approval, not the kind that is incorporated in a union contract.   

If adopted, the revised regs would restrict this kind of flextime to plans of four or more workdays/week, and 33 or more workhours/week.  They would also require the employer to prove that it had offered the employee the option of rejecting the flex plan and, instead, continuing to work “an equivalent weekly schedule of hours with overtime pay after eight straight time hours in a day.”   [Comment: While the regs don’t expressly require documentation, that would seem advisable.]   Perhaps most importantly, the new regs would permit an employer with a DOL-approved flextime plan to avoid paying overtime when the employee’s hours deviate from the approved plan if those deviations are only “occasional” - defined as deviations “that do not exceed 20 percent of the weeks worked by an employee under a flexible work hour plan.”  Proposed 8 AAC 15.102.

Room and board deductions.  Under the current regs, the only time that an employee may authorize an R&B deduction is at the time of hire.  The new regs would permit mid-term authorization of such deductions.    Deductions of $15/day or less would be presumptively acceptable.  Proposed 8 AAC 15.160(e), (f).

 Statement of earnings.  The new regs would expressly permit electronic as well as written earnings statements (a/k/a paystubs).  The statements would have to  break down the hours actually worked into straight and overtime hours.  Proposed 8 AAC 15.160(h). 

Overtime exemptions.  The new regs would repeal the regulations defining overtime exemptions.  The 2005 Legislature adopted the federal regulations defining administrative, executive, and professional exemptions, and transferred the AAC definitions of salespeople to AS 23.10.055(c)(3) and (4).  The category of “supervisor” would completely disappear from the regulations.  Proposed 8 AAC 15.910(a).

The effect of the repeal of the exemption regulations would be to lower the minimum salary of an administrator or an executive from the current $715/week (2.5 x minimum wage) to $572.00/week (2.0 x minimum wage), the same as a professional.

Personnel file.  The proposed regs expressly include “records of hours worked” among the personnel documents that an employee may inspect and copy.  Proposed 8 AAC 15.910(d).