Management

It is not uncommon in small non-profits and higher education institutions to find an employment class called Salaried/Non-Exempt. If this person is not paid annually above the minimum salaried/exempt threshold AND their standard work hours fall below 40 hours, what are the laws governing the hours between standard work hours and 40 per week, and how are they applied?

This is a complicated array of questions, involving a high-stakes area of law…so we’ll take this in stages.

Salaried/Non-Exempt

The member starts by evoking an interesting phenomenon: “Salaried/Non-Exempt” employees; workers entitled to mandatory overtime, but paid via a salary.

Are municipal public libraries obligated to provide retirement benefits for all employees? Does the library board need to approve a motion to provide retirement benefits for all employees or selected employees? Does the number of hours pertain? Or does the employee qualify for state retirement system benefits through the municipality? Again - is it based upon hours worked?

Retirement benefits play a critical part in employee recruitment and retention.  Library leadership should carefully consider—and routinely re-evaluate—the role of retirement in the suite of benefits they use to attract and nurture personnel.

Should an event occur, is it legal in NYS to institute a lockdown in a public library?

This question brought back a lot of memories for your “Ask the Lawyer” attorney.  

Between 2006 and 2017, I was a full-time in-house attorney on a college campus.  On April 16th, 2007, my time in higher ed was forever changed, when the entire campus froze to watch the reporting from Virginia Tech.  32 people dead.  17 wounded.

What laws impact a library’s next-door-neighbor relationships?  Are there best practices for neighbor disputes? 

There are few relationships that can be as rewarding—and as fraught with tension—as the relationship between neighbors.  I have seen neighbors unite to fight for preservation of their streets historic assets, and I have seen neighbors bring law suits over shrubbery.  A library is wise to cultivate a good relationship with its neighbors, just like a person would at their own home.

A member asks…[We] are switching to a Paid Time Off (PTO) model in 2018 and are looking for guidance on how to handle payout of the benefit when an employee terminates from employment. We would like to offer each employee their full yearly amount of PTO at the beginning of the calendar year (or start date of employment for new hires).

Libraries are service-intensive environments, which means they depend on their employees to report to work. However, since so much depends on staff, libraries are also wise to give their employees the tools for self-care and a proper work-life balance.

We are struggling with a freedom of expression issue here at our library. When a staff member posts on his/her personal Facebook page something to do with the library, whether positive, negative, or neutral, what rights does the Library have, if any?

The lawyer answers…