Over what period does this law apply? If you are a multinational and you bring workers over for a two-week training course, do you have to give them a raise for those two weeks?
I suspect you do, legally, if you're otherwise paying them less than minimum wage, and they are your employees. Although i'm no lawyer.
It is probably unusual for companies to bring people getting paid less than U.S. minimum wage to the U.S. for a two-week training course. Why would you spend so much money (travel? hotel? they're staying in your basement?) on workers you're paying less than minimum wage?
This was sort of regular at a past job of mine. We have offices in India, China, Japan, and different parts of Europe.
We frequently sent people to India and China to give training, especially when building out a new office or department. Occasionally, we would fly someone here (the US). Not so much for training but more to meet the the team.
With the caveat that I am not a lawyer or accountant, I would expect (but since when are laws reasonable) that if the person flown to the US doing so for a short time period and moving to the US, their pay would not need to change. But I could be very very wrong.
If you have some of your workers from a much poorer country brought over on business, then you should definitely give them higher pay for the trip even if the law says you do not have to, otherwise the business trip is effectively a punishment that leaves them out of pocket should they wish to do something normal like go out to a restaurant.
And if you're flying someone half way around the world and paying for lodging and personal expenses while they are there -- it seems you paying them at least $9/hour (the CA minimum wage) while they are there would not be a significant additional expense. That's what I'm wondering about this story.
The decision went to the text of the Federal Labor Standards Act and decided that it had a very broad definition of employee. I wouldn't expect narrower decisions for companies flying people around for training.
For $200 a week, and given the narrow availability of visiting worker visas, it doesn't seem like it will come up very often.
I think this is a different situation because presumably, they are traveling on business, so all their expenses are paid, just like any other business trip. They would (hopefully) expense everything, so it wouldn't matter what their wage was.
