Wage and Hour Defense Blog

by Michael Kun

We have written frequently in this blog about the great many wage-hour class actions filed against employers doing business in California.   Those lawsuits often allege that a class of employees performed work off-the-clock, and that the employees are not only entitled to compensation for that time, but to a slew of penalties that often dwarf the amount of alleged damages.

Depending on the nature of an employer’s business, a plaintiff might allege that employees were not paid for the couple minutes it might take to “boot up” a computer in the morning, or for waiting to ...

By John Fullerton

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to resolve a split among the federal circuits regarding whether time spent in security screenings is compensable under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), as amended in 1947 by the Portal-to-Portal Act.  The outcome of the case, Integrity Staffing Solutions v. Busk, could have a significant economic impact on employers who require employees to submit to security searches before or after they begin their workday if employers are required to pay for the time employees spend doing so.

The case arises from claims filed by two former ...

by Robert S. Groban, Jr.

On December 19, 2013, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York denied the defendant’s motion for discovery regarding the plaintiffs’ immigration status in Colon v. Major Perry St., Inc., No. 1:12-cv 03788 (S.D.N.Y. 2013).

In Colon, several workers, some of whom are undocumented aliens, sued under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) to recover minimum and overtime wages that the employer refused to pay. The defendant argued that under the Second Circuit’s decision in Palma v. NLRB, 723 F.3d 176 (2nd Cir. 2013), the plaintiffs ...

President Obama announced in his State of the Union address that he will issue an executive order increasing the minimum wage for employees of federal contractors to $10.10 per hour. Most of those employees, however, are already paid in excess of this amount under statutes such as the Service Contract Act and the Davis-Bacon Act.

On January 27, 2014, the United States Supreme Court resolved a long-standing and hotly-contested issue of importance to unions, when it held that time spent donning and doffing required protective gear was not compensable under the Fair Labor Standards Act and the terms of a collective bargaining agreement. Sandifer v. United States Steel Corp., No. 12-417.

In California, employers typically must pay "daily overtime" to non-exempt employees at a rate of one and one-half times their regular rates of pay when they work more than eight hours in a day. In a new decision, the California Court of Appeal has just confirmed an important exemption to "daily overtime" for employees covered by collective bargaining agreements.

On January 15, 2014, the Mayor of the District of Columbia signed a bill increasing the D.C. minimum wage to $11.50, in three steps by July 1, 2016. This caps off a recent coordinated effort in D.C. and suburban Maryland's Montgomery and Prince George's counties to increase the regional minimum wage to $11.50.

In Ward v. Costco Wholesale Corp., No. 11-56757 (9th Cir. Jan. 9, 2014), the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that, under certain limited circumstances, deducting a debt from an employee's final paycheck does not run afoul of federal law or the California Labor Code. However, employers should remain very cautious about making such deductions.

By David Jacobs and Amy B. Messigian

We would like to call your attention to a significant change to the whistleblower statute in California that went into effect on January 1. The statute, Cal. Lab. Code section 1102.5, has been substantially expanded beyond its prior form to now protect employees from retaliation for making internal complaints or even potential complaints about suspected violations of federal, state or local law.

California previously protected employees from retaliation for reporting reasonably suspected violations of state or federal laws to a ...

The Ninth Circuit has asked the California Supreme Court to clarify California's "suitable seating" law requiring certain employers to "provide" "suitable seating" to some employees where "the nature of the work reasonably permits the use of seats." The Ninth Circuit has asked whether the term "nature of the work" refers to individual tasks or a full range of duties, whether an employer's business judgment should be considered in determining if the nature of the work "reasonably permits" the use of a seat, and whether the employee must prove what would constitute a "suitable seat" to prevail.