Labor & Employment Law Rules

Labor & Employment Law Rules

1. What it is

Labor & Employment Law Rules is the platform’s compliance engine for wage-and-hour, overtime, break, scheduling-notice, and minor-work regulations. It lets an admin map each location to a jurisdiction, attach the rules that apply there, and have the scheduling engine enforce those rules automatically during shift assignment.

• Enablement: Available to any admin. The five admin surfaces — Labor Law Rules, Employment Law Rules, Work Policy Settings, Compliance Explorer, and Employment Law Audit History — appear in the admin sidebar under the Work Policies section.
• What it is not: This is not Content Governance (moderation of user-generated content) or the Compliance Hub app (SOX/SOC 2 vendor compliance). It governs labor regulations that affect scheduling, pay, and breaks.

2. Standing it up

1. Go to Admin → Employment Law Rules. This surface shows the global rule library that MangoApps maintains — browse it to confirm the jurisdictions and document types that apply to your locations.
2. Go to Admin → Labor Law Rules and create the rules that govern your business. Each rule belongs to a jurisdiction and has exactly one rule type: wage, overtime, break, schedule, or minor. If your jurisdictions do not exist yet, create them first under Admin → Jurisdictions — each jurisdiction needs a code, name, and level (country, state, or city), and you can nest city inside state inside country.
3. Assign jurisdictions to locations. Until a location has at least one jurisdiction, the scheduling engine has no rules to enforce for shifts at that location — this pairing is the most common silent setup gap.
4. Go to Admin → Work Policy Settings to configure the tenant-wide enforcement dials: maximum daily hours, maximum weekly hours, minimum rest period, and break enforcement mode. The break enforcement mode starts in observe — it evaluates and records break-compliance events but does not block anything. Move it to enforce only after reviewing your break-compliance backlog.
5. To confirm it is working, create a shift at a location that has a jurisdiction with rules. The scheduling engine should apply compliance checks during assignment — blocked assignments appear in the Compliance Audit Logs.

3. How it fits together

Jurisdictions are the organizing spine. A jurisdiction has a level (country, state, or city) and can be nested — a city jurisdiction has a state parent, a state has a country parent. When the scheduling engine resolves which rules apply to a shift, it walks the jurisdiction hierarchy from most specific (city) to least specific (country) and takes the highest-priority rule per type. Every jurisdiction belongs to the business and can optionally link to a global system jurisdiction maintained by MangoApps. When linked, the platform can keep the jurisdiction’s name and code synchronized with the global catalog.

Labor Law Rules are per-business, per-jurisdiction rules with five types:

• Wage — minimum wage rate (decimal, e.g. $15.50)
• Overtime — daily and/or weekly overtime thresholds (hours)
• Break — meal break timing, rest break intervals, and a structured break-requirements document for complex multi-period statutes
• Schedule — advance notice days for schedule publication
• Minor — work-end time and maximum daily hours for minors

Each rule has an effective date, an optional expiration date, and a priority. When two rules of the same type apply to a location (e.g. a state and a city wage rule), the more specific jurisdiction wins. A rule can optionally link to a MangoApps-maintained system rule and inherit its rate instead of using locally entered values — the admin chooses the rate source per rule.

Exceptions let an admin exempt a specific role or employee from a labor law rule, or override a rule’s value for them. Exception types are override (changes the value) and exempt (removes the rule). Target groups are role and employee — each must resolve to a real role type or user in the business.

Employment Law Rules are a separate, broader knowledge base maintained globally by MangoApps (no business_id). They cover 18 document types — separation agreements, WARN notices, employee handbooks, non-compete agreements, leave policies, wage-hour rules, pay transparency, predictive scheduling, safety compliance, ADA accommodation, AI employment rules, and more. Admins cannot edit these directly but can add business overrides — either an “additional” rule (a requirement beyond the legal minimum) or a “stricter” rule (tightening an existing system rule). Overrides cannot relax system rules.

Legal Updates track law changes over time. When MangoApps updates a system employment law rule, a legal update notification is created with a review period (default 30 days). Affected businesses receive a review record they can acknowledge, customize (by creating an override), or dismiss. If no action is taken before the review period ends, the update auto-applies. Reviews flagged as urgent are those with critical severity or whose auto-apply deadline is within 3 days.

Work Policy Settings (the RestPeriodSetting record) are the tenant-wide dials that the scheduling engine reads during shift assignment. They govern maximum hours, rest periods, break enforcement, and which violations are hard disqualifiers (block the assignment entirely) versus soft warnings (penalize the match score).

4. Running it

Creating a labor law rule

1. Go to Admin → Labor Law Rules and click New.
2. Select a jurisdiction and a rule type.
3. Fill in the fields for that type — the form shows only the fields relevant to the selected type (e.g. a wage rule shows only the minimum-wage field).
4. Set the effective date. Optionally set an expiration date and priority.
5. Save. The rule is active by default.

Loading default rules

1. On the Admin → Labor Law Rules index, click Load Defaults.
2. This loads a seed file of standard rules for the business. Existing rules are not duplicated — the seed uses find-or-create logic.

Adding a business override to an employment law rule

1. Go to Admin → Employment Law Rules.
2. Browse or search the system rules. Click a rule to see its details.
3. Click New Override on the rule detail page — or go to the Overrides tab.
4. Choose the override type: additional (new requirement) or stricter (tightening an existing system rule). A stricter override must reference a system rule.
5. Fill in the rule name, description, clause text, jurisdiction, document type, and category. Provide a business justification.
6. Save. The override is active and current immediately.

Reviewing a legal update

1. Go to Admin → Employment Law Rules and click the Legal Updates tab.
2. The stats bar shows pending, reviewed, customized, and urgent counts.
3. Click a pending update to see the old and new clause text side by side.
4. Choose an action: Acknowledge (accept the system change), Customize (create a stricter business override), or Dismiss (mark as not applicable). Each action closes the review.

Adding an exception to a rule

1. Go to Admin → Labor Law Rules, click a rule, then click New Exception.
2. Select the exception type (override or exempt) and target group (role or employee).
3. Provide the target value — a specific role type or employee. The value must resolve to a real record in the business.
4. Save. The exception is active by default and checked during scheduling enforcement.

Using the Compliance Explorer

1. Go to Admin → Compliance Explorer.
2. The dashboard shows total active system rules, jurisdiction count, and a breakdown by level (federal, state, city).
3. Use the Rules tab to browse and filter by document type, rule category, jurisdiction level, or keyword.
4. Use the Gap Analysis tab to see where the business has compliance gaps — missing rules, documents, or training for its jurisdictions.
5. Use the Search tab for semantic search across the rule catalog using natural language.

5. Settings

These settings live under Admin → Work Policy Settings and govern how the scheduling engine enforces compliance.

Setting	Default	What it changes
Max daily hours	12.0	Shifts that would push an employee past this cap are penalized or blocked
Max weekly hours	40.0	Weekly hour accumulation cap
Min rest period (hours)	8.0	Minimum hours required between the end of one shift and the start of the next
Enforce daily hours	On	Whether the daily-hours cap is checked during assignment
Enforce weekly hours	On	Whether the weekly-hours cap is checked during assignment
Enforce rest period	On	Whether the rest-period minimum is checked during assignment
Meal and rest break enforcement	Observe — record findings only	Off: no break evaluation. Observe: evaluate and record findings but do not block. Enforce: evaluate, record, prompt at clock-out, and block non-compliant assignments
Daily hours hard disqualifier	On	When on, exceeding daily hours blocks the assignment entirely; when off, it only penalizes the match score
Weekly hours hard disqualifier	On	Same as above for weekly hours
Rest period hard disqualifier	On	Same as above for rest period
Emergency override enabled	On	Whether managers and admins can override compliance blocks
Compliance override roles	Manager, Admin, Super Admin	Which roles can authorize a compliance override
Contracted days off	Soft prompt	Whether an assignment on a contracted day off raises a confirm dialog a manager can override, or fails outright

Labor law rule defaults (per rule, not per tenant):

Setting	Default	What it changes
Active	On	Whether the rule is enforced
Priority	0	Higher-priority rules win when two rules of the same type apply
Rate source	Use my own values	Switch it to Use the MangoApps-maintained rate and the rule inherits its rate from the linked MangoApps system rule

6. More help

• Labor & Employment Law Rules FAQ — specific setup questions, allowed ranges, and troubleshooting
• Audit Logs & Activity History — the Employment Law tab records every compliance event this engine produces
• Compliance Administration — overall compliance settings and policies
• Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about labor law compliance from this article.