The Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division is relaunching its opinion letter program. While these opinion letters are aimed at the broader private sector, they’re particularly valuable for government contractors because compliance with basic wage and hour law is a cornerstone for fulfilling their prevailing wage obligations.

Here is a summary of the requirements of the Walsh-Healey Public Contracts Act (“PCA”), the federal wage law which covers supply and manufacturing contractors. Basically, the PCA only requires the FLSA minimum wage be paid, but still imposes child labor, overtime, health and welfare, posting, and recordkeeping requirements. In the conclusion, I tell two recent WHPCA-related war stories about cases I had involving hybrid contracts.

The Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division’s newsfeed dried up when the Trump administration came into office. Could the newsfeed drought be over? Possibly - WHD just announced two recent enforcement actions, one of which concerns the potential for bonus payments to require the payment of boosted overtime rates.