The Department of Labor has a message for employers in cities hosting the 2026 World Cup: We're here to help you comply with federal wage and hour laws.

Translation: We're watching.

The DOL's Wage and Hour Division recently announced compliance-assistance resources for employers in the 11 U.S. host cities preparing for the flood of soccer fans, tourists, hotel guests, restaurant patrons, bar tabs, rideshare trips, security needs, cleaning shifts, temporary staffing, and event work that will come with the tournament. The agency specifically pointed employers to resources for industries expecting World Cup-driven spikes, including restaurants, hotels, and other businesses serving fans.

That sounds friendly enough.

It's also a warning.

Because when demand spikes, hours spike. When hours spike, overtime spikes. And when overtime spikes, wage-and-hour mistakes multiply.

The FLSA does not contain a "but it was really busy because of soccer" exception.

It does not contain a "we were short staffed" exception.

It does not contain a "this was a once-in-a-generation event" exception.

And it most certainly does not contain a "we made everyone a manager for the month" exception.

If a non-exempt employee works more than 40 hours in a workweek, you pay overtime. One and one-half times the employee's regular rate. Not a flat bonus. Not free tickets. Not pizza. Not "we'll take care of you later." Overtime.

Special events create special wage-and-hour risks because employers start improvising.

They add shifts without thinking through overtime.

They pull assistant managers into non-managerial work and assume the salary still solves the problem.

They bring in temporary help and forget that someone has to track hours accurately.

They use volunteers who are not really volunteers.

They let employees work off the clock because "everyone is pitching in."

They miscalculate the regular rate by excluding bonuses, shift premiums, commissions, or other compensation that must be included.

They rely on tip pools that do not comply with the law.

They schedule minors for hours or jobs that child-labor rules do not permit.

They ask employees to answer texts, take calls, set up events, or close out work after clocking out.

That is how a great business opportunity turns into a DOL investigation.

And once the DOL starts asking questions, "we were slammed" is not a defense. It's called "Exhibit A."

Hospitality employers should be especially careful. Restaurants, bars, hotels, breweries, caterers, parking companies, security vendors, cleaning contractors, event venues, and staffing agencies all live in the danger zone during major events. These businesses often run on variable schedules, tipped employees, shift swaps, side work, temporary labor, and managers who jump in wherever needed.

That is normal operationally.

It is dangerous legally.

The fix is not complicated, but it does require discipline.

Audit classifications now. Make sure the employees you treat as exempt actually satisfy both the salary and duties tests. A title does not make someone exempt. Calling someone an "event manager" does not magically erase overtime if the job is mostly serving beer, checking IDs, cleaning rooms, stocking coolers, running food, or working a register.

Train supervisors before the rush. Managers need to understand that they cannot encourage, tolerate, or ignore off-the-clock work. If they know work is being performed, the time must be paid.

Plan schedules around the 40-hour workweek. The FLSA does not care that your payroll period is two weeks. Averaging 30 hours one week and 50 the next does not avoid overtime. That 50-hour week includes 10 overtime hours.

Review your regular-rate calculations. Bonuses, premiums, commissions, and some incentive payments may need to be included in the overtime calculation. This is one of the easiest places for employers to get it wrong.

Watch joint-employment issues. If you use staffing agencies, vendors, contractors, or event partners, do not assume their payroll mistakes stay their problem. Shared control can become shared liability.

Be careful with volunteers. For-profit businesses generally do not get free labor just because someone is excited about the event. Calling someone a volunteer does not make them one.

Keep clean records. If the records are bad, the employer almost always loses the wage-hour fight.

The World Cup will be great for host cities. It will be great for restaurants, hotels, bars, breweries, event venues, transportation providers, security companies, and countless other employers that will benefit from the surge.

But the FLSA is not suspended for kickoff.

Big events do not change the rules. They just increase the odds that employers will break them.

Sunday is Father's Day. Which makes this lawsuit especially worth paying attention to.

Emilio Arellano claims that Golden State Cider fired him after he took leave and sought additional flexibility to help care for his prematurely born son.

According to the lawsuit, his employer didn't respond with support. It responded with retaliation. The company denies wrongdoing. The case remains pending.

But the allegations highlight an issue many employers still fail to recognize:
Workplace discrimination against fathers is real.

Not because employers think fathers are caregivers. Because they think they aren't.

When employers assume fathers should prioritize work over family, they're relying on the same unlawful sex stereotypes that protect mothers when employers assume they should shoulder caregiving responsibilities.

The EEOC has been saying this for decades. Denying leave, flexibility, or opportunities to fathers that would be afforded to mothers can violate Title VII.

And the legal risk is increasing.

Last year, the Supreme Court held in Ames v. Department of Youth Services that Title VII protects "any individual" and that courts cannot impose higher burdens on so-called majority-group plaintiffs.

The EEOC has embraced that principle, making clear that discrimination is discrimination, regardless of who brings the claim.

That matters for fathers.

A dad who is treated differently because he doesn't conform to traditional expectations about gender and caregiving isn't bringing a novel claim. He's bringing a sex discrimination claim.

Which brings us to a question every employer should ask: If this employee were a mother instead of a father, would we have responded the same way?

If the answer is no, you've identified a legal risk. And perhaps a cultural one, too.

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To See or Not to See: Disciplined Worker Entitled to View Employer's Surveillance Footage — via EntertainHR

Three San Francisco Giants pitchers are facing backlash after writing a Bible passage on their Pride Night caps during a team-sponsored LGBTQ+ celebration. The players cited Genesis 9:12-16, the biblical passage describing the rainbow as God's covenant with humanity. Critics viewed the gesture as a deliberate rebuke of Pride Month and the LGBTQ+ community. The Giants apologized for the pain caused. Major League Baseball warned the players for violating uniform rules.

Predictably, the story has become another front in America's never-ending culture war.

But strip away the politics and outrage for a moment, and what's left is a workplace issue every employer should understand.

While the setting is a Major League Baseball clubhouse, the legal and practical issues are no different from those employers confront every day.

The Giants wanted to send a message of inclusion. The players wanted to express their religious beliefs. Those objectives collided in public.

Welcome to the modern workplace.

Many commentators are treating this controversy as a simple morality play. It isn't.

For employers, this is a textbook example of what happens when two different Title VII protections collide.

On one side sits religious accommodation. Employees generally have the right to express sincerely held religious beliefs, and employers must accommodate those beliefs unless doing so creates an undue hardship.

On the other side sits protection against harassment and discrimination based on sexual orientation. Employers have a legal obligation to provide a workplace free from unlawful harassment and to ensure LGBTQ+ employees are treated with dignity and respect.

What happens when one employee's expression of faith is perceived by another employee as hostility toward their identity?

That's where the easy answers disappear.

Too often, employers approach these conflicts as though one protected class should automatically prevail over another. The law doesn't work that way. Title VII protects both religious employees and LGBTQ+ employees. An employer that reflexively sides with one group without considering the rights of the other creates legal risk and workplace discord.

That does not mean employers should sit on the sidelines. They shouldn't. But neither should they become arbiters of competing belief systems. An employer's role is not to decide whether a religious viewpoint or a social viewpoint is more worthy of protection. Its role is to regulate workplace conduct. The focus should be on behavior and workplace impact, not ideology. In other words, employers should protect beliefs and referee conduct.

The better approach is to focus less on the viewpoint being expressed and more on its workplace impact.

Is the conduct directed at a particular employee? Is it creating a hostile work environment? Is it interfering with someone's ability to do their job? Is it merely an expression of personal belief, or has it crossed the line into harassment or discrimination?

Those questions matter because Title VII does not require employers to eliminate disagreement. It requires employers to prevent unlawful harassment.

That's an important distinction.

Employees are entitled to hold different religious, political, and social beliefs. They are not entitled to harass one another because of those beliefs. Likewise, employees are entitled to be free from discrimination because of their sexual orientation, but that protection does not automatically prohibit coworkers from expressing religious viewpoints with which they disagree.

The challenge for employers is finding the line between protected expression and unlawful conduct. That line is rarely bright, often controversial, and increasingly common in today's workplace.

The Giants attempted to navigate that tension in their response. The organization reaffirmed its support for Pride Night while also acknowledging that individual players may make personal choices regarding participation in team-sponsored events.

That approach will satisfy almost no one.

Some LGBTQ+ advocates argue the players should have faced discipline because their conduct undermined the purpose of the event. Others argue the players should have been free to express their faith without criticism.

Both sides miss an important point.

Inclusion isn't tested when everyone agrees. It's tested when people don't.

Any employer can create a workplace that welcomes people who share the same values. The real challenge is creating a workplace where employees with fundamentally different beliefs can coexist professionally and respectfully.

That doesn't mean every form of expression must be permitted. Employers can and should enforce neutral workplace rules. MLB's warning reportedly stemmed from a uniform-policy violation, not the content of the message itself. That's an important distinction. Content-neutral rules are often far easier to enforce than rules that appear to target a particular viewpoint.

The Giants controversy isn't really about baseball. It's about a challenge employers face every day. When religious expression and LGBTQ+ protections appear to collide, the answer isn't to choose a side. The answer is to apply the same standard to everyone, focus on conduct rather than ideology, and remember that Title VII protects both groups. The hardest workplace issues arise when two protected rights point in different directions. That's exactly when employers need to be most careful.

My life's biggest regret is that I never studied abroad.

Imagine you walk into court with what appears to be a strong case. The law is on your side. The facts are on your side. Even the judge seems troubled by what the government is doing. And then you lose anyway. Not because you're wrong. Because the court says it lacks the power to decide whether you're right.

That's essentially what happened last week in FreeState Justice v. EEOC.

The case arose from the EEOC's response to President Trump's January 2025 executive order recognizing only two sexes, male and female. Following that order, then Acting EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas announced that the agency was rolling back what it characterized as the prior administration's "gender identity agenda."

Words turned into actions.

According to the lawsuit, the EEOC stopped processing certain categories of gender-identity discrimination charges. The agency resumed investigating some claims involving hiring, firing, and promotion decisions. But it allegedly continued refusing to process claims alleging harassment based on gender identity and retaliation against employees who complained about such discrimination.

In practical terms, transgender employees could still file certain discrimination charges with the EEOC. But if a transgender employee alleged workplace harassment or retaliation, the agency allegedly would not investigate those claims.

The lawsuit also alleged that the EEOC directed state fair-employment agencies that it would no longer reimburse them for investigating gender-identity charges on the agency's behalf.

The plaintiff, an LGBTQ+ legal-services organization called FreeState Justice, argued that these policy changes effectively denied transgender workers access to protections that Title VII guarantees.

They have a point. 

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