Wage and Hour Defense Blog

A new “comp time” bill that would dramatically change when and how overtime is paid to private sector employees in many, if not most, jurisdictions has passed the House of Representatives.  And unlike similar bills that have been considered over the years, this one might actually have a chance of passing. If it can get past an expected Democratic filibuster in the Senate, that is.

“Comp time” – short for “compensatory time” – is generally defined as paid time off that is earned and accrued by an employee instead of immediate cash payment for working overtime hours.

Since 2000, the number of wage and hour cases filed under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) has increased by more than 450 percent, with the vast majority of those cases being filed as putative collective actions.  Under 29 U.S.C. § 216(b), employees may pursue FLSA claims on behalf of “themselves and other employees similarly situated,” provided that “[n]o employee shall be a party plaintiff to any such action unless he gives his consent in writing to become such a party and such consent is filed in the court in which such action is brought.”  Despite the prevalence of FLSA ...

On April 3, 2017, a federal district court in New Jersey rejected the National Labor Relation Board’s (“NLRB”) D.R. Horton and Murphy Oil holdings and upheld employee waivers of class and collective arbitration. In dismissing wage and overtime claims brought by an employee of Chili’s Grill & Bar, District Judge Noel Hillman ruled that such mandatory arbitration agreements do not violate the National Labor Relations Act. Cicero v. Quality Dining, Inc., et al, 1:16-cv-05806 (April 3, 2017).

Judge Hillman noted the issue was pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, and that the ...

Persons who live and work outside of California, including employment attorneys and the most seasoned of human resources personnel, are often confounded when they first learn about California’s Private Attorneys General Act (“PAGA”).  And, for many, the first they learn about PAGA is when a PAGA lawsuit has been filed against their company.

The same series of questions and answers often follow:

A single individual can file a lawsuit against an employer alleging that all employees were subjected to certain violations of the California Labor Code?

Yes.

Even if there are ...

A federal district court in California has weighed in on the question of whether student-athletes are employees for the purposes of minimum wage and overtime laws. And, like the courts before it, it has rejected that notion.

In Dawson v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, No. 16-cv-05487-RS (N.D. Ca. April 25, 2017), the United States District Court for the Northern District of California has joined the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and other courts in holding that athletes are not employees entitled to minimum wage and overtime time pay.

In Dawson, a former college ...

As many will recall, the Department of Labor’s (“DOL”) overtime rule, increasing the salary threshold for overtime exemptions at the behest of the Obama administration, was scheduled to take effect on December 1, 2016. Months later, it remains in limbo before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal. And it apparently will remain in limbo for at least several more months.

After publication of the final overtime rule on May 23, 2016, two lawsuits were filed by a coalition of 21 states and a number of business advocacy groups, claiming that the DOL exceeded its rulemaking authority in ...

Our colleague Adriana S. Kosovych, associate at Epstein Becker Green, has a post on the Hospitality Employment and Labor blog that will be of interest to many of our readers: “Chipotle Exploits Wide Variation Among Plaintiffs to Defeat Class and Collective Certification.”

Following is an excerpt:

A New York federal court recently declined to certify under Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (“Rule 23”) six classes of salaried “apprentices” at Chipotle restaurants asserting claims for overtime pay under New York Labor Law (“NYLL”) and parallel state ...

In Romero v. Top-Tier Colorado LLC, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that tips received by a restaurant server for hours in which she did not qualify as a tipped employee were not “wages” under the FLSA, and therefore should not be considered in determining whether she was paid the minimum wage.

Tipped Employees & the FLSA

The FLSA provides that employers may take a “tip credit” and pay employees as little as $2.13 per hour if: (i) the tip credit is applied to employees who customarily and regularly receive tips; (ii) the employee’s wages and tips are at least equal to the ...

Featured on Employment Law This Week - “For Want of a Comma.” It seems that punctuation was a key factor in a recent class action suit from a group of dairy delivery drivers in Maine.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled that an exemption in the states overtime law is ambiguous enough to support the drivers’ overtime claim. The drivers argued that the exemption applies only to workers who pack perishable food products for distribution—and not those who actually distribute the products. On appeal, the First Circuit agreed that a missing “Oxford” comma makes ...

A Maine dairy company has received a potentially expensive grammar lesson from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, which held on March 13, 2017, that the company’s delivery drivers may be eligible for up to $10 million in overtime pay, because the lack of a comma in the statute regarding exemptions from the state’s wage and hour law rendered the scope of the exemption ambiguous.

Grammarians have long disputed whether writers should include a comma before the final item in a list—the so-called “serial” or “Oxford” comma.  Opponents of the serial comma consider ...