Vicki H. Wilmarth, Attorney at Law

Vicki looks at a local charity that unintentionally underpaid its employees and the legal consequences for any employer who makes compensation errors.

Underpayment of Wages at Local Charity The FLSA “simply” requires payment of minimum wage and overtime. But there are many ways for an employer to unintentionally break this law by underpayment of wages.

If you pay any employees on salary instead of hourly, as an employer you need to review new regulations released today by the United States Department of Labor, requiring that the salary you pay to any exempt employee is at least $43,888.00 beginning on July 1, 2024. That minimum increases to $58,656.00 on January 1, 2025. Those are substantial increases from $35,568.00, the salary minimum currently required by the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”), which governs minimum wage and overtime.

New FLSA Minimum Salary Requirements If you pay any employees on salary instead of hourly, you need to review new regulations released today requiring that the FLSA salary minimum is at least $43,888.00 beginning on July 1, 2024.

Perfect swag from a wonderful client’s HR summit that I spoke at yesterday.

I have said this close to 3 gazillion times in my employment law career. 🤣

Employers are required to grant more religious accommodation requests from their employees because of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision. This could mean disruptions to your company's schedules, holidays, dress codes, assignment of duties, etc. Read more on Vicki's latest employment law alert.

Employer Religious Accommodation Obligations Increase In light of a recent United States Supreme Court opinion, your burdens as an employer to accommodate your employee’s religious beliefs and practices have increased.

"The job market is getting a fast start off the blocks as 2023 begins," said Daniel Zhao, Glassdoor senior economist. "Despite recession fears and inflation woes, 2022 was marked by a surprisingly resilient labor market and the first report of 2023 is an echo of that. The odds of a soft landing have improved."

Job Growth Exploded in January U.S. employers added 517,000 new jobs in January, much more than expected, according to the latest employment report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Wright, Wilmarth & Byrd, PLLC, a respected law firm in Amarillo and a laid back, fun place to work, is seeking a receptionist to provide gracious interaction with clients.

What We Are Looking For:

• Warmth and kindness to clients.
• Excellent verbal communication over the phone and in person.
• Professional written communication skills (polite, spell-checked, grammatically correct).
• Commitment to protecting confidential information.
• Organizational skills.
• Team player who is willing and capable of assisting others when needed.
• Reliable transportation to run firm errands.
• Excellent computer skills (Word required; Clio, Excel, ProDocs, Quickbooks preferred).
• Maturity and professionalism without a lot of drama at work.

What We Offer:

• Competitive pay
• Generous PTO policy
• Health insurance and 401(k) if full-time
• Beautiful new offices in Southwest Amarillo
• Relaxed and friendly attorneys and staff
• Frequent cuddles from the well-behaved office dog(s)

Hours Required: Full-time, or will consider 9-3 p.m. for the right applicant.
Preferred experience: 2+ years of customer service experience

If you are interested in applying for the position, you must send:
1. a well-written cover letter;
2. your resume; and
3. contact information for three references (former managers and coworkers, not just personal friends) to [email protected].

Deadline for submitting this information is January 25, 2023.

Every employer with 15 or more names on the payroll needs to understand its obligations under two new federal laws relating to pregnant and nursing employees. With bipartisan support in Congress, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) and the Providing Urgent Maternal Protections for Nursing Mothers Act (PUMP Act) were passed last month and take effect almost immediately.

New Laws Regarding Pregnant and Nursing Employees Every employer needs to understand its obligations under two new federal laws relating to pregnant and nursing employees.

It’s holiday time and that means that the good cheer at office parties may cause business owners and supervisors to worry if they can be liable for their employees’ off-duty conduct. For example, employers want to know if they have any responsibility when a intoxicated employee leaves the Christmas party and then goes home and assaults his wife.

Vicki Wilmarth answers this question and provides other information that employers need to know on The Employer's Advocate.

Are Texas Businesses Liable for Employee Off-Duty Conduct? It’s holiday time and that means that the good cheer at office parties may cause businesses to worry if they can be liable for their employees’ off-duty conduct.

As most local employers know, hiring is hard right now. There are very few applicants and some of those who apply disappear during the hiring process by missing an interview or ghosting your emails and calls.

But don’t let the difficulty of filling an open position tempt you to skip important steps in the hiring process, particularly criminal background checks.

Knowing if your potential employee has a criminal background can prevent many problems down the road. And for some employers in Texas, it is actually required by law.

Employer's Background Checking Obligations Don’t let labor shortages and hiring difficulties tempt you as a Texas employer to skip criminal background checking.

Are your commission pay arrangements with your employees in writing? The Texas Supreme Court confirms that they should be.

Commission Pay Arrangements in Texas If you as an employer pay any of your employees on commission, a recent Texas Supreme Court case makes it clear that your commission arrangement needs to be in writing.

Wright Wilmarth Byrd has a part-time job opening for an office assistant. The successful applicant will work in a comfortable SW Amarillo office setting with friendly coworkers and a couple of sweet, well-trained office dogs.

Here is a very general job description:

9-3 M-F (expectation is 25-29 hours per week)

Duties:

Greet clients, answer phones, file, make copies, run errands, update clients on status of work, data entry, file docs online, create spreadsheets, organize client documents, perform special projects.

Must be experienced with Word and Excel, would also prefer Quickbooks and legal billing experience.

Needs these skills:
Great communicator (written and oral)
Kind and patient with clients
Extremely organized
Detail oriented
Very proficient in Microsoft Office
Willing to learn

Must have reliable transportation. Mileage for errands is reimbursed.

Reports to Office Manager.

You must send an updated resume and a well-written cover letter to demonstrate your communication abilities if you want to be considered for an interview. Send the resume and cover letter to [email protected].

Vicki Wilmarth is an employment law attorney and business transactions lawyer who's been working in this area for three decades. She knows the local business world. In this conversation with host Jason Boyett, she details the challenges local businesses have faced over the past two years, including worker shortages. But—plot twist!—Vicki is also a passionate birder and photographer, and shares why the Panhandle is such a great place to spot bald eagles and other species. You guessed it: This is a wide-ranging conversation.

🎧 iPhone: bit.ly/heyamarillo
🔉 Spotify: bit.ly/hey_amarillo

I had a lot of fun talking about my law practice and my birding hobby in this week’s episode of the Hey Amarillo Podcast. Jason Boyett is a world-class interviewer and made me sound much more interesting than I actually am!

This is huge. If you are a Texas Panhandle employer in retail, food services, entertainment, supermarket industries, you need to let your employees know that their childcare will be free for the next 12 months (within some income restrictions). Its an effort to help these industries recover from the pandemic. Please help your employees and job applicants access this incredible opportunity.

OSHA released the vaccine mandate for large employers (100 or more employees company-wide) today. Employees will have to be vaccinated by January 4, 2022, or face weekly COVID testing and constant masking.

Vicki Wilmarth's employment law blog has all the details.

New Federal Vaccine Mandate Immediately Affects Employers with 100+ Employees The Occupational Health and Safety Administration released its new vaccine mandate as an Emergency Temporary Standard today for employers who have at least 100 employees (“large employers”). The ETS is effective on November 5, 2021, and large employers only have 60 days to fully implement their ...

What should a Texas Panhandle employer do to improve recruiting of employees for all those open positions in 2021?

Vicki provides some helpful tips in her latest employment law alert.

How to Hire and Retain During the “Big Quit” During the "Big Quit", what should a Texas Panhandle employer do to improve recruiting of employees for all those open positions in 2021?

I am getting a lot of questions about the legality of Texas employers mandating vaccinations for their employees. Here are the answers.

Employers Mandating Employee Vaccinations For private employers in Texas, it is well within the companies’ rights to require their employees to get vaccinated.

This is a very thoughtful analysis by one of the first large employers that mandated vaccinations for its employees. Houston Methodist carefully considered the risks and benefits, educated its employees, fought and won in federal court and ultimately required more than 33,000 employees and contracting physicians to get protected from COVID, all to protect patients., employees and the community of Houston from preventable harm.
https://hbr.org/2021/07/how-to-develop-a-covid-19-employee-vaccination-policy?autocomplete=true

How to Develop a Covid-19 Employee Vaccination Policy Lessons from a health care system in Texas.

Small businesses in Texas (those with less than 15 names on the payroll) in September 2021 will no longer be exempt from Texas sexual harassment law, including, based on court cases, harassment of employees on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. It's the last chance for small Texas employers to clean up their acts.

Small Texas Employers Newly Liable for Sexual Harassment Texas employers who have less than 15 employees are no longer protected from sexual harassment claims under the small employer exception.

Age discrimination cases are difficult for employers to win because the elderly make very sympathetic plaintiffs and the judges and jurors themselves are often older. But a recent Fifth Circuit case out of Lubbock gives a blueprint to managers of how to dispassionately and carefully handle the termination of a poor-performing older employee.

How Employers Can Do Everything Right Here are eight lessons an employer can learn about winning an age discrimination case by doing everything right.

Governor Greg Abbott banned "vaccination passports" in Texas. What does this mean for your business?

"No Vaccination Passports": What Does Abbott Mean? How are businesses supposed to respond to Governor Greg Abbott's ban on vaccination passports in the state of Texas? What does his order mean?

Vicki discussed with News Channel 10 whether employers can mandate COVID-19 vaccinations for their employees.

Law experts share how employers can require workers to receive vaccine Now that vaccine distribution is ramping up, the question of whether employers can require workers to get it remains.