Risk Prevention Strategies: Avoiding Costly FLSA Missteps
What Should I Do If My Employer Failed to Pay Me Wages?
On August 16, 2024, a divided Seventh Circuit panel held that a court needs to establish personal jurisdiction over each individual member of a Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) collective, further contributing to an existing...more
A hotel manager was recently held individually liable for violations of federal wage and hour law under a broad definition of “employer.” Although the ruling applied to a unique set of facts – including that the manager was...more
I have blogged about these automatic deduction cases, but they nevertheless keep popping up with disturbing regularity. In another example of this phenomenon, employees have sued a Michigan healthcare employer, alleging...more
It seems every week another call center case pops up. These are extremely dangerous cases for employers and that is why I keep writing (or, harping) about them, as a warning to employers, not only those who operate call...more
There has been a great deal of controversy about the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in all facets of life and now the legal field. My own firm has certain very restrictive rules about lawyers using AI, especially when...more
On January 3, 2024, the defendant in Heppard v. Dunham’s Athleisure Corporation filed an interlocutory appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, arguing that the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District...more
It’s the fourth quarter. Three seconds are left on the clock, and your team is losing by one point. Your place kicker confidently trots onto the field to attempt the game-winning field goal. As he does, the TV announcer says,...more
Nearly a decade ago, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued three decisions clarifying and tightening the standard for asserting plausible overtime claims under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) in the...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: Employers frequently struggle with questions around the compensability of certain activities, classification of employees, and how to structure their policies to avoid Fair Labor Standards Act violations. ...more
In Perry et al. v. City of New York, the Second Circuit upheld a large jury verdict in favor of a collective of workers regarding off-the-clock work. In doing so, the Court reaffirmed the principle that employers will...more
For decades, the Department of Labor (DOL) has recognized the impracticability of requiring Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) nonexempt employees to clock in exactly at the beginning of their scheduled shifts. In most...more
Employers that fail to pay required minimum wage or overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act are liable for the amount of missed wages: doubled, plus attorneys fees, costs, and interest. The court can award such damages...more
The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) provides a process by which an employee or a small group of employees can sue for unpaid wages, often in the form of overtime, and can also claim to be representing all others “similarly...more
On May 9, the U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”) secured its largest Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) jury verdict in history, when a jury in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania awarded $22 million to a class of approximately...more
On April 14, 2023, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia (Ellis, J.) declined to conditionally certify a collective of USA Today sports website editors, ruling that the familiar two-step Fair...more
The recent seizure and shutdown of two prominent regional banks – Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank – highlights for employers the issues that an unexpected liquidity crisis may bring. And, it’s not just banking...more
In the wake of the recent news of bank failures, businesses—and their investors—are rightly concerned about the implications of a missed or delayed payroll. Let’s look at those implications, and strategies for minimizing...more
Federal and state wage and hour litigation has been an area of concentration for Industrial/Organizational Psychologists for decades. These cases address alleged discrimination in wage-based employment practices such as...more
For years, many employers have used the practice of time-clock rounding. This is a practice of rounding time entries by employees to the nearest five-minute, six-minute, or 15-minute interval. This practice is lawful under...more
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently held that time spent booting up computers for call center employees at the beginning of their shift is integral and indispensable to their work and thus compensable under federal...more
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held on October 24, 2022, in Cariene Cadena et al. v. Customer Connexx, LLC et al., No. 21-16522, that the time a group of call center workers spent booting up their computers...more
A decade ago, a California Court of Appeal held that employers lawfully could round employees’ time punches if the rounding policy was neutral on its face and as applied. See See’s Candy Shops, Inc. v. Super. Ct., 210 Cal....more
I do a lot of wage hour defense and one of the threats I constantly come up against is a Department of Labor telling me that the owner of the Company or corporate officers will be held personally liable for unpaid wages if...more
On October 24, 2022, the Sixth District issued a decision in in Camp v. Home Depot, handing employees a major win in the wage and hour arena by holding that Home Depot’s practice of rounding hourly employees’ total daily...more
While the Supreme Court’s opinion in Southwest Airlines Co. v. Saxon, 142 S. Ct. 1783 (2022), brought needed clarity to the analysis of the class of workers excluded as “transportation workers” by the residual clause of the...more