General Wage & Hour Law News & Updates

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The USDOL is busy again issuing Opinion Letters and has again turned its focus to the issue of inclusion/exclusion of bonuses into the regular rate for purposes of overtime computation.  These Letters are not binding on courts but they operate to evidence the agency’s position on whatever issue is being addressed so they are extremely…

There have been a host of wage hour cases in the energy industry and I have often commented upon these.  Many concern misclassification issues and another example of this phenomenon has arisen where a class of pipeline inspectors has requested that a federal court approve a settlement amounting to more than $2,000,000 where the theory…

Employers always have difficulty knowing what sums should be included in calculation of the regular rate and many employers unwittingly walk themselves into trouble by not knowing the intricacies of FLSA computation. Well, the USDOL is finally doing something about that. The agency just finalized a rule that allows employers to not include the cash…

I love Assistant Manager class actions because it gives a defense lawyer a “golden” opportunity to defeat class certification by asserting that too much individual scrutiny is required to allow a class action to proceed.  A beautiful example of this is a recent Walmart case where a group of Assistant Managers dropped their misclassification lawsuits,…

The New Jersey test for independent contractor status under the unemployment laws is already very tough, the very infamous, A-B-C standard.  That is seemingly not enough for this Administration and Commissioner Asaro-Angelo.  The Senate Labor Committee has just passed Senate Bill 4204 which will revise the last two prongs of this tri-partite test, making it…

It is fairly easy for a plaintiff to get conditional certification in a FLSA class action case, but that is not the end of the story.  The next step, much harder, is fending off the defendant’s anticipated motion to stop the class from receiving final certification.  It is even more difficult to withstand that defendant’s…

I like how the USDOL is moving along with proposals and plans that assist employers in running their businesses, compensating their employees fairly, and, importantly, not running afoul of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).  The agency has now proposed a rule that would allow employers to use the so-called “fluctuating workweek” formula for overtime…

There has been a lot of talk about how much more pro-business the U.S. Department of Labor was going to be under this Administration.  Well, appearances can be deceiving, as a report has just come out indicating that the agency collected in excess of $322 million last year for workers who did not receive proper…

The truth is that cannabis has now become (and continues to become) big business and the issue of regulation, much, none or in the middle, is now coming to the forefront in legal circles.  Many firms (my own included) have cannabis practice groups and are advising companies in this burgeoning field about the rules of…

I have defended many claims and lawsuits involving working time, especially travel time.  Employees are continually seeking innovative ways to convert their otherwise non-compensable home-to-work travel into compensable work hours.  These efforts often fail, as illustrated by a recent case where Chicago police officers sought pay for transporting and storing their guns and then retrieving…