Reversing summary judgment in favor of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), the Eighth Circuit has held that jury questions exist as to whether the defendant employed drivers who provide non-emergency medical transport...more
Relying on the parties’ written employment agreement and compensation plans, a California federal district court held that an at-will employee who was laid off due to COVID-19 could not recover commissions that were not fully...more
On May 18, 2020, the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) announced a new final rule to govern the determination of whether an employer qualifies as a “retail or service” establishment for purposes of...more
The September 30, 2018 deadline has come and gone for Governor Jerry Brown to evaluate the bills passed by the California legislature this year. In his last hurrah, Governor Brown has signed into law a jaw-dropping number of...more
There has not been much litigation over the HCE, the so-called Highly Compensated Employee exemption under the FLSA. Recently, an interesting case explored the issue of whether commission payments can form the entirety of the...more
Media reports have mistakenly suggested that a recent decision by the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals (Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee) found the federal Fair Labor Standards Act to prohibit recouping a draw or...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: A recent decision highlights why the FLSA is not always the remedial statute created to protect low-income workers by holding that four commission-based sales representatives, each earning six figures, were...more
Under federal law, employers must pay employees time-and-a-half if they work over 40 hours in a workweek, unless the employees are exempt from the overtime law. Employers don’t usually think of an employee who takes home...more
Last month a California appellate court held that an employer violates California law by paying inside sales employees on a draw against commission. In Vaquero v. Stoneledge Furniture LLC, the court held that such a pay...more
On February 28, 2017, the California Court of Appeal issued a significant decision in Vaquero v. Stoneledge Furniture LLC (No. B269657). The decision, which was certified for publication, is the first ruling by a California...more
In Vaquero v. Stoneledge Furniture, LLC, (No. B269657, filed 2/28/17) the California Court of Appeal for the Second Appellate District held employers must separately compensate their commission based employees for mandatory...more
The First Circuit Court of Appeals recently affirmed a lower court’s decision that an employer may use the fluctuating workweek method to calculate overtime pay rates even when an employee’s weekly pay varies because of...more
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit recently sided with an ever-increasing line of cases clarifying the type of payments that may be added to a fixed salary without violating the fluctuating workweek method...more
Employees discharged as part of a company restructuring can participate in a collective action lawsuit for unpaid overtime wages under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) despite waiving their collective action rights in...more
On June 14, 2014, the California Supreme Court held that employers could not satisfy California’s compensation requirements for the commission sales exemption by attributing commission wages paid in one pay period to other...more
In recent years there has been substantial litigation regarding whether and how employers may satisfy California minimum wage requirements for compensation plans involving commissions. In Peabody v. Time Warner Cable, Inc.,...more