(Editor’s note: This piece originally ran in the May 26, 2011, issue of the Briefly Legal PDX e-newsletter)

Local labor and employment law attorneys are a bit skeptical about a new app recently introduced by the U.S. Department of Labor. The app, compatible with the iPhone and iPod Touch, is a timesheet that allows employees to independently track the hours they work and determine the wages they are owed.

The free app is available through iTunes in both English and Spanish, and the DOL hopes to expand its compatibility to include Android and BlackBerry. It currently allows users to track regular work hours, break time and overtime hours. The DOL plans to account for tips, commissions, bonuses, deductions, holiday and weekend pay, and shift differentials in future upgrades.

“This new technology is significant because, instead of relying on their employers’ records, workers now can keep their own records,” the DOL states in a press release touting the new app. “This information could prove invaluable during a Wage and Hour Division investigation when an employer has failed to maintain accurate employment records.”

That’s a cause of concern for labor and employment law attorneys like Clarence Belnavis, a partner at Portland-based Fisher & Phillips. Belnavis and some of his colleagues worry that the app is a means for the DOL to encourage wage and hour cases against employers.

“The DOL is really energized to pursue wage and hour claims against employers, and this app will do more harm than good potentially because it creates more opportunities for misunderstandings,” Belnavis says.

He points out that employees could start the app before they actually get to work or use it during the day when they are attending to personal matters.

“It’s like the saying, ‘Garbarge in, garbage out,’” he says. “The app is only as good as what the employee chooses to record, and it’s more a question of when they start and stop the app than when they actually worked.”

Amy Angel, a partner at Barran Liebman in Portland, says that while the app may make it more convenient for employees to track their own hours, it doesn’t define compensable time for users.

“That is always a concern when employees are keeping their own records because an employee may not understand what constitutes work time and what doesn’t,” she says. As an example, some employees may believe their commute is work time when it isn’t.

Ultimately, Angel and Belnavis point out, it’s the responsibility of employers to accurately track their employees’ work hours. We’ll probably soon see an app for that….

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(Editor’s note: This piece originally ran in the May 5, 2011, issue of the BrieflyLegal e-newsletter)

Geordie Duckler is a Tigard animal law attorney who collects case cites as a hobby. This week, he dug into his archives to pull up cases from 1941 and 1982.

Skin Deep?: The use of cosmetics is apparently constitutionally protected: “Following the ancient tradition of her sex the modern dame or damsel, viewing with dismay the incipient extra chin or tiny crowfoot, marking the plodding progress of Father Time, is impelled to erect bunkers of defense armed to withstand the inevitable assault. All of this is lawful and within the realm of inalienable rights classically defined as the “pursuit of happiness.”  – Whitcomb v. Emerson, 46 CA2d 263 (Cal. App. 4th 1941).

Snack-nicking sneak:  Likely the meanest landlord in recorded history: “In defense of its exclusionary policy, the landlord’s apartment manager testified that the decision to bar families with children rested in part on a number of past instances in which young tenants had engaged in annoying or potentially dangerous activities [including] the attempted solicitation of snacks from the landlord’s office staff.” – Marina Point Ltd. v. Wolfson, 30 C3d 721 (Cal. App. 4th 1982).

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