Anthony Hall practices primarily in the areas of labor and employment law. He provides litigation defense and extensive preventative counseling to clients in all areas of labor and employment law.
Dora Lane practices primarily in the field of employment and labor law. Her experience includes counseling clients on wage and hour, retaliation, and other employment related issues.
The recently enacted Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act amends the Fair Labor Standards Act ("FLSA") to require that employers provide "reasonable break time for an employee to express breast milk for her nursing child for 1 year after the child's birth each time such employee has need to express the milk." In addition, the FLSA now mandates that employers provide "a place, other than a bathroom, that is shielded from view and free from intrusion from co-workers and the public, which may be used by an employee to express breast milk." (This requirement does not preempt state laws which may give greater protection to employees with respect to lactation breaks.)
The US Department of Labor just issued Fact Sheet #73, which provides further guidance on lactation breaks. Some of Fact Sheet #73's highlights are included below:
- Only employees who are not exempt from overtime pay are entitled to lactation breaks;
- Employers with fewer than 50 employees are not subject to the break requirement if compliance will cause undue hardship to the employer. The existence of undue hardship is determined by looking at the difficulty or expense of compliance for the particular employer in light of the employer's size, financial resources, and the nature and structure of the employer's business. For purposes of determining whether a covered employer has the requisite number of employees, all employees must be counted, regardless of work site;
- Lactation breaks need not be paid; however, where employers provide paid breaks (as required under Nevada law, except for the meal period), an employee who uses paid break time to express milk must be compensated in the same way that other employees are compensated for the break time;
- The location provided for expressing milk must be functional as a space for such a purpose. If the location is not dedicated to the nursing mother for purposes of expressing milk, the location must be available when needed.
The full text of the Fact Sheet can be found at http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs73.htm
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