Wage and Hour Defense Blog

By Michael Kun and Aaron Olsen

To the surprise of few, the California Supreme Court has decided to review the Court of Appeal’s decision enforcing a class action waiver in Iskanian v. CLS Transportation Los Angeles, LLC.

We wrote in detail about that decision on this blog earlier this year.

In reaching its conclusion, the Court of Appeals relied on the April 2011 United States Supreme Court’s landmark decision in AT&T Mobility, LLC v. Concepcion.  Whether the California Supreme Court will follow Concepcion or attempt to distinguish it is impossible to predict.   Unfortunately ...

By Michael Kun

EBG’s free wage-hour app, which allows users to access federal law and the laws of many states, has been updated to include Massachusetts law.

The app can be dowloaded here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id1320249735

By Michael Kun

Earlier this year, we were pleased to introduce our free wage-hour app for iPhones and iPads.  The app puts federal wage-hour law, as well as that for many states, at users’ fingertips.

We have recently added New Jersey law to the app, as well as updated it to reflect changes in California law following the long awaited Brinker v. Superior Court decision clarifying meal and rest period laws.

The app may be found here:  https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id1320249735

By Amy Traub and Desiree Busching

Just as designers must be cognizant of copycat fashions, employers must be cognizant of copycat lawsuits.  In February of this year, Xuedan “Diana” Wang filed a lawsuit against her former employer, Hearst Corporation, on behalf of herself and others similarly situated, alleging that the company violated federal and state wage and hour laws by failing to pay minimum wage and overtime to interns working for Harper’s Bazaar.  Wang had worked for Harper’s Bazaar during the fall of 2011.  Her lawsuit was filed in February 2012, only five months ...

By Adam Abrahms

Outside of California, employers frequently enter into agreements with non-exempt salaried employees that provide for a set weekly salary that includes overtime for a specific number of hours and is based on a defined regular rate of pay.  For example, an employer may agree to pay an employee as salary of $950 a week for 45 hours of work resulting in the employee being paid $20/hour for the first 40 hours and time and half ($30) for the overtime hours.  These agreements typically provide that if an employee works more than the established hours, the employee would be paid ...

By Michael Kun

Yesterday, only weeks after its long-awaited Brinker v. Superior Court decision, the California Supreme Court issued another important ruling on California meal and rest period laws. 

In Kirby v. Immoos Fire Protection, Inc., the Supreme Court ruled that neither party may recover attorney’s fees on claims involving meal and rest periods.  The Court analyzed the legislative history of the meal and rest period provisions and concluded, “We believe the most plausible inference to be drawn from history is that the Legislature intended [meal and rest period] claims to ...

By:  Michael Kun

This morning, the California Supreme Court has just issued its long-awaited decision in the Brinker case regarding meal and period requirements.   It is largely, but not entirely, a victory for employers.  A copy of the decision is here.

A few highlights of the decision:

On rest periods, the Court confirmed the certification of a rest period class because Brinker’s written policy arguably did not comply with the law as to the second rest period in a day.  In so doing, it clarified when employees are entitled to rest periods:

·         Employees are entitled to 10 minutes’ rest for ...

Wage and hour investigations and class action lawsuits continue to be a potentially serious problem for many employers, resulting in an abundance of new cases filed and many large settlements procured.  In addition, in September 2011, under the guidance of the Obama Administration, the Department of Labor and IRS announced an effort to coordinate with each other to address misclassification of employees as independent contractors, which is resulting in additional investigations, fines, and/or legal liability levied on an employer.

Click here to register for this complimentary ...

By Amy Traub and Desiree Busching

Like the fashions in the magazines on which they work and the blockbuster movies for which they assist in production, unpaid interns are becoming one of the newest, hottest trends— the new “it” in class action litigation. As we previously advised, there has been an increased focus on unpaid interns in the legal arena, as evidenced by complaints filed by former unpaid interns in September 2011 against Fox Searchlight Pictures, Inc. and in February 2012 against Hearst Corporation. In those lawsuits, unpaid interns working on the hit ...

by Michael S. Kun, Eric A. Cook, and Jennifer A. Goldman

California Governor Jerry Brown has signed two employment-related bills into law, raising the stakes for employers doing business in California. The two laws, which increase the penalties for employers that wrongly classify employees as independent contractors or engage in "wage theft," both go into effect on January 1, 2012.

Read the full advisory online

by Suzanne K. Brown

On August 23, 2004, the U.S. Department of Labor overhauled the Federal overtime exemption regulations with amendments that included elimination of the former “long” and “short” tests for exemption (the application of one or the other being determined by the employee’s salary level), in favor of a single, streamlined duties test for each category of exemption, including executive, administrative, professional and outside sales employees. Since that time, New Jersey’s overtime exemption regulations, which were modeled on the Federal ...

According to Kraft, by enacting Section 203(o) of the FLSA, Congress believed that allowing labor and management to alter donning and doffing compensation through collective bargaining was in the best interest of the employees and that any such agreement should be enforceable despite any potential contradictory State law, consistent with Congress's mandate that collective bargaining be governed exclusively by federal law. Kraft believes the Seventh Circuit's opinion is inconsistent with Supreme Court precedent and misinterprets federal law