Class Actions

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I have many clients that want to comply with the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) and pay workers properly, especially for overtime. However, I have found that even the most well-intentioned employers sometimes will not consider the nuances and vagaries of overtime calculations under the FLSA and a class action is the result. In this…

When two entities are a joint employer, or could be deemed as such, they must aggregate the hours worked by employees at each facility in a given week. If those hours exceed forty in total, then overtime must be paid. Sometimes, the entities either believe they are not a joint employer or, simply, do not…

The issue of whether expense reimbursements should be included as “wages” when computing the regular rate for overtime has been around for many years. Sometimes, an employer will seek to “disguise” wages as expenses in order to avoid overtime. Sometimes, expense reimbursement is just that. These principles are possibly to be explored by the US…

I have written about call center cases, which involve allegedly unpaid working time, many times. Well, they continue to pop up. In a recent case, a class of workers claim that they were expected/required to handle customer calls after the end of their shifts, during their break times, as well as performing additional off-the-clock tasks.…

The thorny issue of what constitutes “working time” is always causing headaches for employers and the pandemic period has increased these concerns greatly, with demands made for compensation for testing time, vaccination time. A class action has been recently filed, seeking compensation for workers in a meatpacking plant who want pay for time spent being…

Another administrative exemption case, this time in the trucking industry, tests the contours of that vague, nuanced exemption and to what occupations it applies. In this case, a group of Logistics Coordinators contend they are not within the exemption because their primary duty was making sales and they were not paid on a salaried basis,…

In a chicken-and-egg type of case, an unusual case, the Third Circuit has emphatically held a Judge taking over a class action case must deal with the threshold issue of whether a class should be certified prior to a trial commencing on the collective claims of the class. The Court sternly warned that if this…

When I, as a management-side practitioner, defend a FLSA class action, the contingency I fear is that a court might find that the violation was “willful,” thereby extending the two-year statute of limitations to a third year. A recent case shows just how hard a defendant will fight against that third year. In this case,…

The issue of misclassification of workers as exempt when they might not be has been around for a very long time. Another class of such workers has been certified in the health care industry. The federal Judge has granted final certification to two classes of workers claiming they are entitled to overtime. The classes will…

I read an interesting post in the Seyfarth Shaw blog about out-of-state employees and their ability to become part of a FLSA collective/class action. The FLSA allows individuals to bring suits claims for overtime violations “for and in behalf of’ themselves and other “similarly situated” employees. Often, in these cases, there are but a few…