Every wage-and-hour rule that touches a hotel. In one place. Kept current.

Litigation & rulemaking watch

Key developments#

1. June 13, 2026

   Site update: audit engines deepened — 16 penalty regimes, 15 premium jurisdictions, per-day tip credit, service-charge downstream math#

   A category-leap upgrade to the four audit engines. The exposure modeler now spans 16 regimes sorted by damages architecture — adding Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Maryland, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and a second Illinois record for the Minimum Wage Law — with Massachusetts prejudgment interest on the un-trebled base (George), New York's spread-of-hours and pay-frequency gate, Colorado's demand-tender toggles, and an optional user-supplied attorneys'-fee line. The tip-pool architect makes the New York and Connecticut daily dual-jobs rules computable, adds the Connecticut attestation and Colorado patron-notice gates, card-portion-only fee math, New Hampshire and Montana overlays, and a service-charge classifier that prices the downstream regular-rate uplift, overtime, FICA/§45B, and OBBBA exclusion. The housekeeper auditor promotes the LA County, Glendale, and Long Beach ordinances to computed rules and adds Washington's Demetrio piece-rate decomposition. The workweek auditor adds Illinois and Kentucky premium rules (13 → 15) and resolves the tip-credit ceiling exactly per day when the floor steps mid-week.

2. June 12, 2026

   Site update: premium-pay engine expanded to 13 jurisdictions; penalties to 9; per-day wage floors#

   The workweek auditor now computes verified premium rules for CA, NY, CO, NV, AK, WA, OR, MA, NJ, CT, NH, RI, and D.C. — including Colorado and Washington break-time pay, the reporting-pay guarantees in six states, D.C. split-shift pay, and Nevada rolling-24-hour and Colorado 12-consecutive-hour overtime computed from shift segments. The exposure modeler adds WA, NJ, IL, CO, and D.C. penalty regimes and all four post-reform PAGA tiers; the tip-pool architect adds seven state overlays including Minnesota's mandatory-pool prohibition; wage floors now resolve per day, so a mid-week rate step computes both regimes. A new methodology page documents sourcing and every disclosed gap.

3. June 12, 2026

   LA County HWPO workload caps re-verified; over-cap premium basis still unconfirmed#

   Secondary verification of unincorporated Los Angeles County's Hotel Worker Protection Ordinance (county code ch. 8.21, operative April 1, 2026) confirms the workload tiers (4,500 sq ft per 8-hour workday at hotels under 40 rooms; 3,500 sq ft at 40+), two-way proration, and the 10-hour written-consent rule with 7 days' advance notice of the right to decline. County summaries describe the over-cap premium inconsistently — 'double pay for the extra work' versus double pay for every hour worked that workday — and the codified text could not be retrieved, so the workload premium remains unmodeled in the audit tools pending verification against ch. 8.21 as codified.

4. June 12, 2026

   Major Seven new audit and planning tools launch on this site#

   The tools library grows from three calculators to ten interactive tools: a stacked Workweek Compliance Auditor (federal + state + city + hotel-ordinance layers in one pass), a Housekeeper Workload & Piece-Rate Auditor covering the square-footage ordinances, a Tip Pool & Service Charge Architect with per-person legality verdicts, a Portfolio Rate Forecaster with scheduled steps through 2030 and beyond, a Wage-Hour Exposure & Penalty Modeler, a Fair Workweek Premium Calculator for the five laws that reach hotels, and a Hotel Compliance Profiler.

All developments → · Atom feed

The issue library

Eighteen briefs that cover the territory#

Tips & Service Charges#

• Tip credit

  How the FLSA tip credit actually works for hotels: the $2.13 cash wage, notice requirements, the full timeline of the 80/20 rule's rise and fall, New York's complete Part 146 tier tables, the CT and IL regimes, and the phase-outs in DC, Chicago, and Michigan.

• Tip pooling

  Who may share a hotel tip pool: the federal manager-supervisor bar (FLSA2025-1), the guest-contact test (FLSA-2025-03), back-of-house no-credit pools, NY meaningful authority, MA mandatory treble, and which architecture to choose.

• Service charges

  The tip/service-charge line and everything that turns on it: regular-rate overtime, NY 196-d and the World Yacht presumption, MA's mandatory treble Tips Act, HI's disclose-or-distribute rule, banquet disclosure drafting, local pass-through mandates, and the FTC resort-fee rule.

Pay Computation#

• Overtime & regular rate

  The site's canonical regular-rate reference: building the FLSA §7(e) rate from service charges, bonuses, commissions and differentials; dual-rate math; the §7(i) spa exemption; day-rate traps; and state daily overtime.

• Minimum wage

  How the federal, state, and local minimum wage layers interact at hotels: the highest-floor rule, a cross-regime remedy table, the rate-change calendar, the free-and-clear kickback rule, and meal and lodging credits.

• Hotel ordinances

  Every hotel-specific wage, workload, healthcare, and retention ordinance in one map — LA's $25.00 step on July 1, 2026, Santa Monica, Long Beach, Oakland, Seattle — and the class litigation they generate.

• Housekeeper pay

  Per-room and piece-rate pay done legally: a Labor Code 226.2 decomposition, a per-room-vs-hourly decision framework, an eight-ordinance workload table with worked over-cap math, the Hyatt Long Beach settlement, and NY weekly-pay exposure.

Workforce Structure#

• Exemptions

  The 2026 salary floors ($684 federal, $1,352 CA, $1,275 NY), the three conjunctive exemption tests, the Helix day-rate rule, and what a blown hotel-manager exemption costs in reconstructed overtime.

• Independent contractors

  Misclassification is existential for hotels: the 2024 DOL rule live in private litigation under FAB 2025-1, three competing classification rulebooks, and the full employee-damages stack on reclassification.

• Joint employer

  Who the wage-and-hour employer is when brand, owner, operator, and staffing agency share one hotel: the economic-reality test, the Salazar brand-standards line, joint-and-several exposure, and CA Labor Code 2810.3.

Time & Scheduling#

• Off-the-clock work

  What counts as paid time in a hotel: pre-shift cash counts, uniform changing, the pay-everywhere-or-split bag-check call, on-call engineers, BIPA clocks — and how small minutes annualize into a class.

• Meal & rest breaks

  The state break patchwork in a verified 10-state table, the California deep dive — the Ferra regular-rate premium with the arithmetic, the Donohue presumption applied, and the §226.7 → Naranjo → PAGA exposure pipeline — plus the pay-on-exception decision and the hotel failure patterns.

• Scheduling

  The fair-workweek laws that actually cover hotels in 2026 — Chicago, Evanston, Philadelphia, Oregon, Berkeley — with the premium math regime by regime, plus reporting-time pay, California split shifts, and New York spread-of-hours.

Enforcement, Tax & Special Populations#

• Recordkeeping

  FLSA Part 516 retention, the Mt. Clemens burden shift and Donohue presumption, California's wage-statement penalties, New York's WTPA, and weekly-pay exposure for housekeepers under NY Labor Law 191.

• Tip tax & payroll

  The mandatory 2026 W-2 (Box 12 TP/TT, Box 14b TTOC), the §45B FICA credit now reaching hotel spas, and the OBBBA tips/overtime deductions: codes 301-304, the FLSA-premium split, and a payroll checklist.

• PAGA & class actions

  How one break or rounding violation cascades into wage-statement, waiting-time, and PAGA civil penalties — and how the June 2024 reform's cap decision tree and arbitration strategy contain it.

• Seasonal & resorts

  How the H-2B offered wage flows to U.S. workers, the §13(a)(3) amusement exemption's two prongs, the §3(m) lodging-credit failure mode, J-1 coverage, and the concessioner two-track after EO 14026.

• Minors

  Minors in hotels and resorts: the 14-15 occupation list and hours grid, Hazardous Orders 10, 12, 5, 8, and 2, alcohol-service ages, lifeguard rules, state work permits, and the strict-liability penalty math that turns one bad summer schedule into a six-figure assessment.

Jurisdiction by jurisdiction

The 50-state center#

Minimum wage, tipped wage, tip-credit status, daily overtime, meal and rest breaks, service-charge law, and hotel-specific ordinances for every state and DC — each with its own verified, dated guide. States shaded green require the full minimum wage in cash before tips; a red dot marks hotel-specific laws.

Open the full comparison table →

Do the math

Tools & checklists#

• Audit engine

  Workweek compliance auditor#

  One worker's real week run through every layer at once — federal and state overtime, meal/rest and split-shift premiums, citywide minimums, hotel-ordinance wages, healthcare payments, and workload caps — violations itemized, every dollar cited.

• Audit engine

  Housekeeper workload auditor#

  The square-footage ordinances with their real mechanics: room tiers, checkout adjustments, proration, double-pay days, and California piece-rate decomposition.

• Design & verdicts

  Tip pool & service charge architect#

  Who can lawfully share the pool, how the money splits, and whether that banquet charge is a tip or a wage — verdicts with citations, state by state.

• Coverage

  Hotel compliance profiler#

  Room count, city, headcount, date — out comes the full applicable-law profile: wage floors with their next steps, ordinance obligations, scheduling laws, recall rights.

• Planning

  Portfolio rate forecaster#

  Every scheduled wage step across your properties through 2030+, with budget deltas and a downloadable compliance calendar.

• Risk

  Exposure & penalty modeler#

  Back wages, liquidated and treble damages, waiting-time penalties, and PAGA with the reform caps — low/high ranges for a violation pattern.

• Calculator

  Tipped overtime calculator#

  State-aware weekly pay for tipped employees — with the overtime math shown step by step, citations included. Catches the classic 1.5 × $2.13 error.

• Audit

  Department audit checklists#

  Housekeeping, F&B, banquets, front desk, spa, valet, engineering — print-ready wage-hour walkthroughs, item by item. Plus the regular-rate calculator, exemption checker, and fair-workweek premiums.

Why trust this site

Verified, dated, and sourced#

Every rate and rule on this site carries a last reviewed date and links to the primary source — the statute, regulation, agency bulletin, or opinion. Volatile items (the 80/20 rule's vacatur, the LA Olympic Wage delay, the Chicago tipped-wage freeze, the 2026 W-2 tip-reporting changes) are re-verified against current sources before publication. Read our methodology — and the disclaimer: this is educational information for the industry, not legal advice.