Federal Wage & Hour Laws and Policy

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In FLSA cases, plaintiff lawyers are always looking for a deep pocket and one of the avenues they use towards this “goal” is the joint employer doctrine.  That doctrine allows more than one employer to be liable for employee damages (e.g. overtime, back wages) if the employers are found to co-determine employee terms and conditions…

Are two lawsuits better than one?  Not for the employer, I can tell you that.  A very interesting case is working its way through the federal courts now, where the US Department of Labor wants to take over a private lawsuit that has been filed alleging Fair Labor Standards Act violations.  The government is contending…

There have been many cases brought recently focusing on the compensability of security checks and in these days of temperature checking for COVID, we expect to see many more.  Some of these cases have gone for the employer and others for the employees.  In a recent case seeking compensation under the New Jersey Wage and…

The USDOL has been issuing a slew of Opinion Letters of late, under the stewardship of Cheryl M. Stanton, Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division. Many of these deal with bonus issues and how these payments can and should be used by employers vis-à-vis their obligations to be compliant with the FLSA. The agency…

The last several years have been quite worrisome to me, as a management side practitioner, on the issue of USDOL agency-initiated liquidated damages assessments. It used to be that only when the USDOL took an entity to court did it seek liquidated damages. Then, some years ago, during the Obama Administration, the agency began seeking…

The USDOL has been pretty busy lately issuing new rules and interpretations about FLSA issues, including vague, nuanced issues like the inclusion (or not) of bonuses in the regular rate and the circumstances under which employers can utilize bonuses. The agency has again issued such a clarification allowing employers to provide bonuses (and hazard pay)…

I have handled many cases involving the so-called commission exemption under the Fair Labor Standards Act, Section 207(i), and I can safely say that often a big stumbling block for the defendant (i.e. employer) is to show that it is in a “retail” industry. Absent that showing, the exemption will not apply, even if the…

We are seeing states start to re-open and businesses start to come back to life and bring their employees back. There are many difficult economic issues that surround these developments, not the least of which is the continuing need to comply with the Fair Labor Standards Act (and state wage and hour laws). These issues…

I have found a very interesting exemption case involving a rather unique job title that also is very instructive in the interpretation of the Highly Compensated Exemption (“HCE”) under the Part 541 FLSA exemption tests. The case involved an employee whose title was Organ Procurement Coordinator, who was seeking back due overtime, claiming he was…