Wage and Hour Defense Blog

By Michael S. Kun and Aaron Olsen

You probably remember the scene in Jaws when Roy Scheider's character first sees the shark that he and his crew have been pursuing.

And you probably remember what he says: "We need a bigger boat."

Well, after the California Supreme Court's latest ruling, California employers may need a bigger boat.

Already besieged by wage-and-hour class actions, California employers now need to brace themselves for a new wave of representative actions under California’s Private Attorneys General Act ("PAGA") after the California Supreme Court has made it ...

Doug Weiner and Matthew Miklave recently prepared a Client Alert noting an effort underway in Congress to broaden the application of the Fair Labor Standards Act in the Health Industry.  That Alert is excerpted below.

Fifteen United States senators have stepped forward to urge the U.S. Department of Labor ("DOL") to repeal a broad exemption from the minimum wage and overtime requirements of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act ("FLSA") for home health care workers. Under current DOL regulations, home health care aides who perform companionship services for the elderly and ...

Times are tough out there.  Company budgets are being slashed, along with the number of employees and available hours.  Many supervisors suddenly find their departments doing the same amount of work with half the people.  On the overtime front, this is a recipe for a disaster.

Under these conditions, many supervisors are trapped with little ability to approve overtime.  Hard working employees may not even request approval for overtime knowing that it will be viewed as an admission they cannot perform their job at the expected level (and thus place them at the top of the list for the ...

by Douglas Weiner

Epstein Becker Green was well represented at the National Advanced Forum on Wage & Hour Claims and Class Actions held in New York City on May 19 and 20. EBG attorney Douglas Weiner addressed the Conference regarding his experience as a former Senior Trial Attorney for the U.S. Department of Labor, identifying emerging trends of Fair Labor Standards Act litigation, and the most expensive mistakes employers make – and how to avoid them. The second day Mr. Weiner moderated a panel of Judges experienced in presiding over wage & hour class actions who gave their ...

by Michael Kun

How quickly can $87 million go up in smoke?

Pretty darned quickly, especially if you are referring to the $87 million that was awarded to plaintiffs and their attorneys in a tip-pooling class action against Starbucks in San Diego.

In Chau v. Starbucks (CA4/1 D053491 6/2/09), Jou Chau, a former Starbucks barista, brought a class action against Starbucks challenging the Company's policy that permits certain service employees, known as shift supervisors, to share in tips that customers place in a collective tip box.
If you've ever been to a Starbucks, you know exactly where ...

by Michael Kun

It has not received much publicity -- yet -- but Representative Alan Grayson of Florida has introduced the Paid Vacation Act, a proposed amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act.

In short, if passed, the Paid Vacation Act would require employers with 100 or more employees to provide one week of paid vacation each year to each of its employees who had worked for 25 weeks or 1,250 hours. Three years after passage, the Act would require those employers to provide two weeks of paid vacation, and smaller employers (those with more than 50 employees) would have to provide one week of ...

 By Michael Kun

     The wage hour class action epidemic that has plagued California employers for the last decade or so appears to have no end.

    If anyone tells you otherwise, they are not paying enough attention. 

    And if they tell you the California Supreme Court is about to put an end to the epidemic, they are mistaken about that, too. 

    The California Supreme Court couldn't put an end to it even if it wanted to, at least not with the issues now before it.  And who is to say that they want to do that anyway?

    As in recent years, employers and their counsel are awaiting several important rulings from the ...

by Michael Kun and Kathryn McGuigan

In recent years, the alleged misclassification of employees under California's wage and hour laws has been a hotly contested issue and the subject of a great many class actions. Faced with several appeals pending before it, the Ninth Circuit has now sought guidance from the California Supreme Court on the outside salesperson and administrative exemption tests as they apply to pharmaceutical sales representatives. Such guidance should prove invaluable to employers in the industry, and to parties to these claims.

In D’Este v. Bayer ...

One of the issues that repeatedly rears its head in wage and hour litigation and Department of Labor investigations is whether employees are being compensated properly for meal periods.  One practice that is almost always controversial, in this regard, is the automatic payroll deduction for lunch.

Absent thorough policies and safeguards to prevent inaccurate timekeeping, the automatic deduction is a significant legal risk that should be used with extreme caution.  The reason -- it is too easy for employees to claim they have been asked to work through lunch, or that they can not ...

The following is a reprint of a client alert authored by EBG attorneys Doug Weiner and Frank Morris, Jr.  It should be of interest to all Florida employers that are considering a reduction in force.

For many employers, these are desperate economic times. Every entity facing diminished revenue must consider cost cuts to survive. As news reports show, reductions in force (RIFs) are being used daily to achieve cost savings, and for some employers they may be the best solution. In some cases, however, the savings are not immediate as a result of statutorily required or voluntary notice ...