Wage and Hour Defense Blog

On April 12, 2018, the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”) issued the first Opinion Letters since the Bush administration, as well as a new Fact Sheet.  The Obama administration formally abandoned Opinion Letters in 2010, but Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta has restored the practice of issuing these guidance documents.  Opinion Letters, as Secretary Acosta states in the DOL’s April 12 press release, are meant to explain “how an agency will apply the law to a particular set of facts,” with the goal of increasing employer compliance with the Fair ...

In Naylor v. Securiguard, Inc., the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that an employer may be required to compensate employees for meal breaks if the employees are required to spend a significant portion of that period traveling to a required break area.

Facts

Securiguard employees guarded several gates to a Naval air station.  During their shifts, the guards received two scheduled thirty-minute meal breaks.  The guards expressed a desire to eat at their posts, but Securiguard prohibited them from doing so (out of concern that the customer would think they were shirking their ...

On April 29, 2015, the California Supreme Court granted the employee’s petition for review of the Court of Appeal’s decision in Augustus v. ABM Security Services, Inc., which reversed a near-$90 million judgment awarded in the favor of a certified class of current and former security guards on rest period claims, and also held that while “an on-call guard must return to duty if called to do so, [] remaining available to work is not the same as actually working.” We previously wrote about the Augustus decision here. Importantly, because the California Supreme Court has decided ...

On January 29, 2015, the California Court of Appeal published its long-awaited decision in Augustus v. ABM Security Services, Inc., reversing a near-$90 million judgment awarded in the favor of a certified class of current and former security guards on rest period claims. The decision is a welcome development for California employers, particularly those who ask employees to remain on-call while on breaks in case they are needed.

The Court of Appeal explained that the trial court’s judgment had rested on the false premise “that California law requires employers to relieve their ...

 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 ...