Mark Hayward of the Union Leader filed the following story from an undisclosed location ten stories below the surface of Wilton.
Moonlighting state workers started getting overtime pay for their second, part-time state job in early January, once the state decided it was a single employer and realized overtime rules would apply across state agencies, a spokesman for Gov. Maggie Hassan said on Wednesday.
However, a federal labor official said Wednesday that federal law has long considered a state a single employer. And Daniel Cronin, district director of the U.S. Labor Department’s wage and hour division, said workers could receive compensation going back two years for violations of wage-and-hour laws — three years if it was deemed intentional.“In this instance, I can’t say for certain whether we would or would not initiate an investigation,” said. Cronin, whose office is located in Manchester. “We don’t turn every complaint into a federal case.”
In early January, the state started considering itself as a single employer, ending years of allowing each agency and department to be a separate employer, Hassan spokesman William Hinkle said. “There are a number of factors that have changed, including a review of state policies related to implementation of the (Affordable Care Act), the implementation of a new payroll system, and the pending consolidation of human resources that led the state to take the conservative position to begin operating as one employer as of Jan. 9, 2015,” Hinkle wrote in an email.
Human resource directors and unions were part of the discussion, and workers started receiving overtime for any weekly work that exceeded 40 hours, he said. Hassan was also involved in the discussions, he said.Between 50 and 60 state workers — most who work full-time for one state agency and hold a part-time job in another — have been affected by the change, Hinkle said.
This week, the New Hampshire Liquor Commission notified 25 workers who hold another state job that they could no longer work after April. “I regret to say that as a consequence of these policy changes and the resulting fiscal impact on our agency budget, we will not be able to continue your employment in this capacity, effective at close of business on April 30, 2015,” James Richards, administrator of Liquor Commission store operations, wrote in a letter sent to workers on Monday.
Hinkle said a smaller number of state workers work two part-time jobs, and agencies did not budget overtime for the part-time positions. He said state law makes workers eligible for benefits if they are hired to work 30 or more hours a week for more than six months. “We recognize that the people who are working two jobs are doing it because they need to. And that is why instead of the normal two weeks notice, employees are receiving 60 days notice,” he said.It’s unclear when — or why — New Hampshire state agencies started viewing each other as separate employers. Hinkle said the practice had been going on for years. But Cronin said federal law that governs wages, the Fair Labor Standards Act, has been on the books since 1938.
Any revisions dealing with states are at least a decade old, he said. The federal law designates a state as a single enterprise when it comes to wage-and-hour laws, he said. In general, his office handles few complaints involving state government, he said. Cronin said he cannot divulge whether his office has received or is investigating any complaints involving New Hampshire state workers.He stressed that the law allows numerous exemptions. For example, overtime rules do not apply to managers, agriculture workers on small farms and recreation workers, in some circumstances.