“Sleep Time” Rule Clarified for Home Care Workers
No Time for Snoozing The federal Labor Department recently clarified when home care providers may apply the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) sleep-time exclusion since the FLSA’s minimum wage and overtime protections were extended to home-care employees late last year. For example, the original sleep-time rules allowed employers to exclude sleep time from an employee’s compensation provided the parties had made a prior reasonable agreement to do so. As now applied to home care, a reasonable agreement means the worker “regularly has the opportunity to sleep overnight, rather than if the employee is present to actively provide around-the-clock care” [...]