Wage and Hour Defense Blog

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (“WHD”) has issued an opinion letter addressing the compensability of a long-haul truck driver time in a truck’s sleeper berth during multi-day trips.  While this question is highly fact-specific, the WHD’s response offers a useful refresher on the widely applicable Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) concepts of compensability of waiting, sleeping, and traveling time.

In Opinion Letter FLSA2019-10, issued on July 23, 2019, the employer operates a fleet of trucks, licensed by the Department of Transportation to ...

As we have previously written, the California Supreme Court’s decision in Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court dramatically changed the standard for determining whether workers in California should be classified as employees or as independent contractors for purposes of the wage orders adopted by California’s Industrial Welfare Commission. A significant question left open by that ruling was whether Dynamex would apply retroactively.

On May 2, 2019, in Vazquez v. Jan-Pro Franchising International, Inc., the Ninth Circuit concluded that Dynamex in ...

After a brief, two-month hiatus, the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor (“WHD”) has issued another round of opinion letters answering various questions submitted by the public.  Specifically, these opinion letters address the calculation of overtime pay for nondiscretionary bonuses, the application of the highly compensated employee exemption to paralegals, and rounding hours worked under the Service Contract Act (“SCA”).  This guidance marks the first issued by the new Wage and Hour Administrator Cheryl Stanton, who has been in the seat since April.

For decades, employers have rounded non-exempt employees’ work time when calculating their compensation.  Maybe they have rounded employee work time to the nearest 10 minutes, maybe to the nearest quarter hour, but they done it and, generally, the courts have approved of it.

But the question employers with time-rounding policies should ask themselves today is this:  Why are we still rounding our employees’ time?

If your answer to that question is Because we have always done it, or Because someone told us it is lawful, it might be time to rethink the issue.

(And if your answer is ...

On June 10, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed a decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal and unanimously held that California state wage-and-hour laws do not apply to drilling workers off the coast of California.

In Parker Drilling Management Services, Ltd. v. Newton, the Court held that, under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (“OCSLA”), state law “is not adopted as surrogate federal law” on the Outer Continental Shelf (“OCS”) if “federal law addresses the relevant issue.”

In the case, an employee on the OCS brought claims under a variety of California ...

Earlier this year, in New Prime, Inc. v. Oliveira, 586 U.S. __, 139 S. Ct 532 (2019), the United States Supreme Court held that the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) does not apply to arbitration agreements with independent contractors who are engaged in interstate commerce.  The Supreme Court did not address whether such agreements could be enforced through other laws.

Now, two different panels of the New Jersey Appellate Division have rendered decisions addressing this unresolved issue.  Those panels, however, reached different conclusions regarding whether the arbitration ...

While it may be true that employees rarely even look at their wage statements, there is one group of persons who certainly do – plaintiffs’ lawyers.  Or, more precisely, California plaintiffs’ lawyers.

And after a stunning $102 million award against Wal-Mart for wage statements that the court concluded did not fully comply with California’s onerous wage statement laws, California plaintiffs’ lawyers are likely to look at their clients’ wage statements even more closely – and to file even more class action lawsuits alleging that employers’ wage statements failed ...

Connecticut appears poised to become the next state to raise its minimum wage to $15 per hour, following the trend set by California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and most recently Maryland, in addition to numerous local jurisdictions.  Governor Ed Lamont is expected to sign H.B. 5004, which passed the state’s House and Senate earlier this month.

Under the bill, the state’s current minimum wage of $10.10 will increase to $11 on October 1, 2019. From there, it will increase one dollar every eleven months until it reaches $15 on June 1, 2023. Thereafter, increases ...

This Employment Law This Week^® Monthly Rundown discusses the most important developments for employers heading into May 2019.

The U.S. House Appropriations Committee heard testimony last month in a hearing entitled, “Combatting Wage Theft: The Critical Role of Wage and Hour Enforcement.” Our colleague Paul DeCamp testified at the hearing to provide insight on the concept of “wage theft” and the state of wage and hour enforcement, as well as how these issues affect employers and workers.

Watch the full episode.

On April 29, 2019, the U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”) issued an opinion letter concluding that workers providing services to customers referred to them through an unidentified virtual marketplace are properly classified as independent contractors under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”).

Although the opinion letter is not “binding” authority, the DOL’s guidance should provide support to gig economy businesses defending against claims of independent contractor misclassification under the FLSA. The opinion letter may also be of value to businesses ...