Deck 17: Government and Legal Issues in Compensation

Question 1

The Davis-Bacon Act _____.

A)states that income from most stock plans need not be included in calculating overtime pay
B)increases the burden of proof on employers to rebut some discrimination claims
C)requires that mechanics and laborers on public construction projects be paid the prevailing wage in an area
D)extends the prevailing-wage concept to manufacturers or suppliers of goods for government contracts

Answer 1

C

Question 2

The highest rates of child labor are in _____.

A)China
B)India
C)Latin America
D)sub-Saharan Africa

Answer 2

D

Question 3

Which of the following groups can qualify for the exemptions under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938?

A)Computer employees
B)Police and other first responders
C)Paramedics
D)Fire fighters

Answer 3

A

Question 4

The executive branch of the federal government _____.

A)enforces laws through agencies and its other bodies
B)passes new laws
C)interprets laws and considers their constitutionality
D)changes existing laws

Question 5

Susan works in a sterile laboratory that requires her to scrub and put on protective clothing.Which of the following acts determines whether she should be paid for this time?

A)The Fair Labor Standards Act
B)The Occupational Safety and Health Administration legislation
C)The Portal-to-Portal Act
D)The Health Care Workers Protection Act

Question 6

Which of the following is NOT a provision of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938?

A)It requires that employers provide 15 weeks of medical leave to employees.
B)It sets minimum wage standards.
C)It prohibits child labor.
D)It requires payment at one-and-a-half times the standard for working more than 40 hours per week.

Question 7

_____ is defined by the Department of Labor as the experience, training, education, and ability as measured by the performance requirements of a particular job.

A)Effort
B)Skill
C)Responsibility
D)Working condition

Question 8

The _____ specifies the number of breaks that must be provided in an eight-hour workday.

A)Portal-to-Portal Act
B)Occupational Safety and Health Administration legislation
C)Walsh-Healey Public Contracts legislation
D)Equal Pay Act

Question 9

Which of the following regarding child labor is NOT true?

A)Persons under 18 cannot work in hazardous jobs such as logging and meat packing.
B)Persons under 16 cannot be employed in jobs involving interstate commerce except for nonhazardous work for a parent or guardian.
C)The ILO finds that child labor is increasing on a global basis.
D)The highest rates of child labor are in sub-Saharan Africa.

Question 10

Under the _____, employers can be liable for current pay differences that are a result of discrimination that occurred many years earlier.

A)Sarbanes-Oxley Act
B)Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
C)Equal Pay Act
D)Fair Labor Standards Act

Question 11

Prevailing-wage laws _____.

A)set pay for work done to produce goods and services contracted by the state government
B)specify that a government-defined prevailing wage is the maximum wage that must be paid for work done on covered government projects
C)give contractors the right to drive down wages using their size
D)were passed in response to conditions on projects such as the construction of the Hoover Dam during the Depression

Question 12

Which of the following includes a provision that requires public companies to set policies to allow executive compensation to be taken back if it was based on inaccurate financial statements that did not comply with accounting standards?

A)The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)
B)The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)
C)The Financial Accounting Standards Board Statement 123 R
D)The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act

Question 13

Meltrop Corp.employs two store clerks, Sam and Stella.Stella sues Meltrop claiming unequal pay as she earns $500 a week less than Sam does despite doing the same work as Sam.Which of the following is most likely to be the result of the litigation?

A)Meltrop will win the litigation as blue-collar workers are exempt from the Equal Pay Act.
B)Meltrop will win the litigation if it can prove that Stella is Sam's senior.
C)Meltrop will lose the litigation as it has committed access discrimination.
D)Meltrop will lose the litigation as it has committed valuation discrimination.

Question 14

The _____ Act extends the prevailing-wage concept to manufacturers or suppliers of goods for government contracts.

A)Sarbanes-Oxley
B)Walsh-Healey Public Contracts
C)Fair Labor Standards
D)Davis-Bacon

Question 15

Denial of jobs, promotions, or training opportunities to qualified women or minorities are examples of _____.

A)access discrimination
B)valuation discrimination
C)treatment discrimination
D)hostile environment

Question 16

Which of the following is a test that must be met to qualify for the administrative employee exemption?

A)The employee must be compensated on a salary or fee basis at a rate not less than $455 per week.
B)The employee's primary duty must be performance of manual work.
C)The employee must customarily and regularly direct the work of at least two or more other full-time employees or their equivalent.
D)The employee must have the authority to hire or fire other employees.

Question 17

Who among the following has violated the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938?

A)Rachel, who pays all her workers a minimum wage of $13
B)Sally, who does not consider time her employees spend travelling to work as compensable time
C)Jeremy, who employs his 16-year-old cousin in his meat-packing plant
D)Randy, who employs his 17-year-old son in his stationery store as a cashier

Question 18

An early study of the effects of the living wage law in Los Angeles found all of the following EXCEPT that _____.

A)7,735 of the employees covered by the law received an average wage increase of 20 percent
B)1 percent of covered jobs were lost
C)a higher proportion of new hires were female
D)turnover and absenteeism declined

Question 19

Under the _____ Act, executives cannot retain bonuses or profits from selling company stock if they mislead the public regarding their company's financial condition.

A)Worker Economic Opportunity
B)Davis-Bacon
C)Walsh-Healey
D)Sarbanes-Oxley

Question 20

The Worker Economic Opportunity Act _____.

A)states that income from most stock plans need not be included in calculating overtime pay
B)requires the value of all employee stock options to be expensed at estimates of fair value on financial statements
C)gives SEC the authority to grant shareholders proxy access to nominate directors
D)extends SEC pay disclosure requirements to highly paid executives

Question 21

In which of the following types of cases is the focus on the discriminatory consequences rather than the intent to discriminate?

A)Disparate treatment
B)Access discrimination
C)Disparate impact
D)Valuation discrimination

Question 22

If federal and state minimum wage laws cover the same job, workers should be paid at or above the higher rate.

Question 23

_____ has produced more comparable-worth pay increases than any other approach.

A)Integrative bargaining
B)Win-win bargaining
C)Interest-based bargaining
D)Collective bargaining

Question 24

While government affects the supply of labor through legislation, it has no effect on the demand for labor.

Question 25

The determination of pay discrimination on jobs of dissimilar content requires a standard that allows jobs of dissimilar content to be declared comparable and that allows pay differences for jobs that are not comparable.This standard is _____.

A)job evaluation
B)comparable worth analysis
C)disparate impact analysis
D)point factor market comparison

Question 26

One objective of the overtime provision of FLSA is to share available work by making the hiring of additional workers a less costly option than the scheduling of overtime for current employees.

Question 27

MNTX University requires that all its female professors score higher than the male professors in their appraisal rating to qualify for a pay bonus as there are more female professors than male professors in the university.Which of the following statements is true in this case?

A)MNTX is liable for access discrimination against women.
B)MNTX is liable for disparate treatment of women.
C)MNTX's pay policy is legal as educational institutions are exempt under the Equal Pay Act.
D)MNTX's pay policy is legal as its intention is to reduce the overall costs of the company and not to discriminate.

Question 28

As the lowest rates paid in the software, chemical, oil, and pharmaceutical industries are already well above minimum, any legislation to increase minimum wage would have little direct impact on them.

Question 29

The ADEA _____.

A)prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, race, or color
B)was amended in 1990 to include the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act
C)was amended in 2011 to ensure that workers get two months' notice before termination
D)prohibits discrimination on the basis of national origin in any employment condition

Question 30

A government-defined prevailing wage is the minimum wage that must be paid for work done on covered government projects or purchases.

Question 31

Which of the following is NOT one of the steps in establishing a comparable-worth pay plan?

A)Adopt a single gender neutral point job evaluation plan for all jobs within a unit.
B)All jobs with equal job evaluation points should be paid the same.
C)Identify the percentages of male and female employees in each job group.
D)Base the wage-to-job evaluation point ratio on the wages paid for female-dominated jobs.

Question 32

The Mental Health Act of 1997 requires that mental illness be covered to the same extent that other medical conditions are covered.

Question 33

The agency that conducts reviews and seeks remedies where insufficient compliance to Executive Order 11246 is found is the _____.

A)OSHA
B)EEOC
C)OFCCP
D)FCSS

Question 34

Which of the following statements regarding wage differences in industries and firms is NOT true?

A)Wages of men in large firms are 54 percent higher than wages of men in small firms.
B)Hispanic men are concentrated in construction and service firms.
C)Female employment is more heavily concentrated in large firms.
D)The pay premium associated with changing jobs is enjoyed primarily by white males.

Question 35

All employees are covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and its amendments without exemptions.

Question 36

Prevailing wages protect foreign workers working as registered nurses.

Question 37

Legislation does not always achieve what it intends nor intend what it achieves.

Question 38

Regarding pay differences for different jobs, _____.

A)courts continue to rely on the use of employer opinion surveys to justify differences
B)the courts favor reliance on the use of statistical models
C)court decisions have been inconclusive
D)courts continue to uphold the use of market data to justify differences

Question 39

_____ prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

A)Executive Order 11452
B)The FMLA
C)Executive Order 11246
D)The Rehabilitation Act

Question 40

A GAO study found that 9 of 10 cases brought by GAO undercover agents posing as workers were mishandled by the Wage and Hour division of the Labor Department.

Question 41

Distinguish between access discrimination and valuation discrimination.

Question 42

Of the four affirmative defenses for unequal pay for equal work, "a factor other than sex" has prompted the most court cases.

Question 43

Women's median annual earnings compared to men's has changed from about 60 percent to 78 percent from 1980 to 2013.

Question 44

What are the sources of earnings gaps?

Question 45

The gender wage gap is moderate for recent college graduates and decreases as the cohort ages.

Question 46

Disparate treatment occurs when a seemingly neutral employment practice disproportionately excludes a protected group from employment opportunities.

Question 47

In the Schultz v.Wheaton Glass case, the Supreme Court ruled that for jobs to receive equal pay, they do not have to be identical but substantially equal.

Question 48

Pay differences for equal work may be justified for demonstrably business-related reasons.

Question 49

The key to a comparable-worth system is a single job evaluation plan for jobs with dissimilar content.

Question 50

The two types of discrimination recognized by law are valuation discrimination and access discrimination.

Question 51

The gender pay gap is common across countries and is smaller in some countries than the U.S.

Question 52

What are the definitions of skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions according to the Department of Labor? What are the conditions that must be met for an employer to support a claim of unequal work?

Question 53

A higher proportion of women are employed by small firms compared to large firms.

Question 54

What are the four basic steps in establishing a comparable-worth plan?

Question 55

Compare and contrast disparate treatment and disparate impact.