Back to the on-screen lesson ·
People decisions about pay, hours, leave, contracts, safety, records and endings need a current local rule, found from an official source for the business's own jurisdiction, recorded with its source and date, and checked again on a set date.
Paper packet. Every task here also exists on screen, where it is checked automatically; answers written on paper are not assessed by Nydus. When you are back at a device, enter your answers there.
You will recognize the people decisions that need a local-rule lookup, put the lookup routine in order, choose a source to rely on, spot rules stated as if they applied everywhere, and set the next check date.
The full cost of pay used an obligations figure the owner looked up. That habit, look it up locally and record it, applies to a whole family of people decisions, and this lesson makes it a routine.
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Local rule | A law or regulation set where the business operates. |
| Jurisdiction | The place whose rules apply: in the US, federal, state and often city or county. |
| Official source | The government body that publishes the rule, or a qualified adviser. |
| Rule record | One line per rule: what it says, the source, the date checked. |
| Review date | When a looked-up rule will be checked again. |
| Layered rules | Federal, state and local rules that all apply at once. |
Some people decisions are the business's own: the apron color, the day of the weekly review, how the schedule is laid out. Others may have part of their answer set by law, and guessing them can be unlawful. The ones to recognize are decisions about:
For any of these, the routine is the same. Name the decision. Find the official source for the place where the business employs people. Record what it says, the source and the date checked. Apply it. Put the next check on the calendar.
Employment rules — pay, leave, contracts, working time, safety, ending employment — are set where the business operates and change over time. Look up the current rule from an official source for your own jurisdiction, and note the source and the date you checked it.
Another way: table
Neighborhood Kitchen's rule record.
| Decision | Source | Checked | Next check |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lowest hourly rate | City and state labor department pages | March | December |
| Meal breaks on long shifts | State labor department guidance | March | March next year |
| Records to keep | IRS employer guide; state guidance | April | April next year |
Another way: steps
The most dangerous employment advice is the confident sentence with no place attached: 'everyone gets a break after six hours', 'employers always pay fifteen percent on top'. It may be true somewhere; it may be wrong where you are; and it may have been right once and changed since. A friend's shop in another state, a forum post, and the owner's own notes from years ago all carry the same risk.
That is why this course never states an employment rule as a fact about the world, and why every figure in it that depends on law is presented as the fictional owner's own looked-up number.
In the United States, employment rules come in layers. Federal law, such as the Fair Labor Standards Act, sets floors for minimum wage, overtime and child labor. States add their own rules, often stricter: a higher minimum wage, paid sick leave, meal breaks, rules on final paychecks. Many cities and some counties add more again, such as their own minimum wage or scheduling rules.
Where layers overlap, the employer generally must follow whichever rule gives the employee more. A business in a city with its own minimum wage pays the city rate, even though the federal rate is lower. So a lookup checks every layer that applies: federal, state and local.
Spot the decision. Ask of every people decision: could the law set part of this answer? If in doubt, assume yes and check.
Find each layer's source. The U.S. Department of Labor for federal rules; the state labor department, and sometimes the state revenue or health department; the city or county website for local rules.
Read the rule for this case. The worker's age, hours, role and the business's size can all matter.
Record it. One line: decision, what the rule says, the source's name and web address, the date checked.
Apply the strictest. Where layers differ, meet the one that gives the employee more.
Set the review date. Many rates change on January 1 or July 1; set the check for the month before.
Check the record. Every line should have an official source and a date within the last year. Any rule with no source, or a source that is a forum or a friend, should be looked up again before it is relied on.
Looking up rather than remembering is needed because rules change. A minimum rate that was right two years ago may be wrong today, and the business is responsible for paying the current one.
Checking every layer is needed because each applies on its own. Meeting the federal rule does not satisfy a stricter state or city rule.
Recording the source and date is allowed, and wise, because it shows what the owner relied on and when. If a rule changes, the record shows which decisions need revisiting; if a question is ever raised, it shows the owner acted in good faith.
Asking a qualified adviser when guidance is unclear is allowed because official guidance does not always answer an unusual case, and a guess about the law is still a guess.
Official sources are easier to find than many owners expect. The U.S. Department of Labor's website covers federal wage, hour and child-labor rules, with a section for each state's equivalent agency. State labor departments publish minimum wage, sick leave and break rules, often with short guides for small employers. Cities with their own rules usually have an office of labor standards with its own page.
The Small Business Administration and local small business development centers can point owners to the right agency. A qualified adviser, such as an employment lawyer or an accountant who works with businesses in the state, is worth paying for when a decision is unusual or the stakes are high.
Some rules are easy to miss because they are not about pay at all. Federal and state laws require employers to display certain posters where employees can see them, to give certain written notices when someone is hired, and to keep payroll and time records for set periods. These obligations apply to small businesses too.
The Department of Labor and state agencies publish the posters free, and list the records required. Add each to the rule record, with its source and date, and check them when the business hires its first employee and each year after.
Some employment laws apply only above a certain number of employees, and owners sometimes assume their business is too small for any of them. Several federal anti-discrimination laws, for example, start at fifteen or twenty employees, while the Fair Labor Standards Act's minimum wage and overtime rules cover most employers regardless of size. Many state laws start at one employee.
So 'we're too small' is itself a rule to look up, not to assume. Note the threshold in the rule record, and note how many people the business employs, because crossing a threshold, such as hiring the fifteenth person, can bring a new set of rules into force overnight. A line on the record saying 'check again at fifteen employees' costs nothing and prevents a surprise.
The rules that apply follow where the work is done, not only where the business is. A cleaner who works in apartments across a city line may fall under two cities' rules; an assistant who works from home in a different state may bring that state's rules with them. As businesses hire more flexibly, this catches more small owners out.
When someone works somewhere other than the business's own location, add that place's rules to the record for that person. If the answer is not clear from the official guidance, this is exactly the kind of case to take to a qualified adviser.
The rule record does not need special software. A one-page table, kept with the business's other records, with a line per rule, is enough: decision, what the rule says in a sentence, source, date checked, next check. Put the next-check dates in the calendar the owner already uses.
Review the whole record once a year, in December, before the January changes that many states and cities make. Add a rule whenever a new kind of decision comes up, such as hiring a minor, a first employee working from home, or a role with overtime, so the record grows with the business.
A café in Denver employed six people at a little above the state minimum wage. The owner had set rates when she opened and not looked again. In December, a fellow owner mentioned that Denver set its own minimum wage, higher than Colorado's, and adjusted it each January.
She built a rule record that week. For pay, she checked the federal rate on the Department of Labor site, the state rate on the Colorado labor department site, and the city rate on Denver's labor standards page, and found that two of her staff were paid below the city rate that would take effect on January 1. She raised their pay before the change, recorded the sources and dates, and set a reminder for each December.
While building the record she also found that Colorado requires paid sick leave, which she had been granting informally but not tracking, and that two required posters were missing from the back room. Each went on the record. A ten-minute check each December now covers all of it.
The U.S. Department of Labor keeps a directory of state labor offices, and most states publish plain-language guides for small employers covering minimum wage, sick leave, breaks, final pay and required posters. They are the first official source to check for any people decision.
Employment rules are the same everywhere. They differ by state and often by city.
Once looked up, always right. Rules change; a review date keeps the record honest.
A small business is exempt. Some rules have size thresholds; many do not. Check.
Any confident source will do. Rely on an official source for your own jurisdiction.
The federal rule is enough. Stricter state and city rules apply too.
Spot the decisions.
$\text{written notices; the rate; paid sick leave}$
Each may be set by law.
Leave out her own choices.
$\text{the tidy-up routine}$
Her policy.
Find the sources.
$\text{state labor department; city page}$
Official and local.
Record each rule.
$\text{what it says; source; date}$
One line each.
Set the review.
$\text{December each year}$
Before January changes.
Spot the decision.
$\text{the lowest rate for an assistant}$
Set by law.
Look up the federal rate.
$\text{Department of Labor page}$
One layer.
Look up the state rate.
$\text{state labor department page}$
A second layer.
Look up the city rate.
$\text{city labor standards page}$
A third layer.
Apply the highest.
$\text{the city rate}$
The strictest applies.
Record and schedule.
$\text{source, date; next check in December}$
Before the January change.
List the decisions.
$\text{rate; notices; breaks; leave; safety training}$
Each may be set by law.
Find federal rules.
$\text{wage, hour and safety pages}$
Department of Labor, OSHA.
Find state rules.
$\text{state labor department guides}$
Often stricter.
Find the posters and records.
$\text{required posters; payroll records}$
Easy to miss.
Record each line.
$\text{rule, source, date}$
On one page.
Ask about the unclear case.
$\text{tool-safety training: an adviser}$
Guidance unclear.
Schedule the checks.
$\text{yearly, and when rates are announced}$
The record stays current.
Spot the decision.
$\text{paid sick leave for part-time cleaners}$
May be set by state law.
Find the source.
$\text{the state labor department's guidance}$
Official and local.
Record and schedule.
Neighborhood Kitchen's owner is making four decisions. Sort each by whether it needs a local-rule lookup.
| Needs a local-rule lookup | The business's own choice | |
|---|---|---|
| The lowest hourly rate she may pay an assistant | ||
| The color of the aprons | ||
| The breaks a worker must have on a six-hour shift | ||
| Which day the weekly review happens |
Complete the worked solution: Bright Home Cleaning's owner last checked her state's paid sick leave rule in month $9$ of the year, and checks it every $5$ months. Find the month number before allowing for the new year, the month of the next check, and the month of the check after that.
Add the interval to the last month.
$(\text{last month}) + (\text{interval}) =$ a
Before allowing for the year's end.
Find the month of the next check.
$(\text{that number}) - \text{twelve} =$ b
It passes month twelve, into next year.
Find the check after that.
$(\text{next check}) + (\text{interval}) =$ c
The rhythm continues.
Say where the dates go.
$\text{on the rule record, beside the source}$
So the rule never quietly goes stale.
Bright Home Cleaning is deciding how much paid leave its cleaners are entitled to. Put the owner's lookup routine in order.
Number the steps in order (write the number in the box):
Dev needs to know what written notices and records his state requires when he hires a new mechanic. Which source should he rely on?
Advice Maya found online about employing her first assistant. Mark every statement that presents a rule as if it applied everywhere.
This task has no paper form; do it on a device.
Neighborhood Kitchen's owner has looked up three minimum hourly rates that apply where she employs people: the federal rate of $8$ dollars, her state's rate of $13$ dollars, and her city's rate of $15$ dollars. What is the lowest hourly rate she may pay an adult assistant, in dollars?
Answer:
A bakery in Seattle kept paying a counter worker the old minimum rate after the city raised its minimum by $1$ dollars an hour on January 1. The worker worked $24$ hours a week, and the owner noticed the change $7$ weeks later. How many dollars of back pay does the bakery owe?
Answer:
A café wants to employ a $17$-year-old for weekend shifts of seven hours. What should the owner do before setting the shift pattern?
Lesson test: one question per skill, one attempt each, no hints. Your answers are checked when you submit.
Monica last checked the minimum pay rule for her state and city in month $2$ of the year, and has decided to check it every $6$ months. Complete the sentence.
Monica's next check of the rule is due in month n of the year.
You can tell when a decision needs the current local rule and find it properly. Tell someone why 'everyone gets a break after six hours' is a warning sign. Next: ending an employment lawfully and decently.
20. Your turn: Bright Home Cleaning's sick leave, step 3
$\text{what it says, source, date; next check}$
One line on the record.