The U.S. Senate parliamentarian said Thursday that the $15 minimum wage provision proposed as a part of the latest COVID-19 pandemic relief package is not appropriate for inclusion, according to releases from several elected officials.
The U.S. Department of Labor has signaled that it's looking to upend a Trump-era rule narrowing the circumstances in which multiple businesses are liable to the same worker, a move attorneys see as confirmation of President Joe Biden's determination to swiftly tackle the issue of joint employment liability.
The Biden administration's rescinding of Trump-era guidance on when businesses can classify workers as independent contractors shows a dim future for the former president's proposed worker classification rule, experts told Law360.
House lawmakers approved a $1.9 trillion package of economic incentives designed to combat the coronavirus pandemic early Saturday, but its fate is uncertain in the Senate, where bipartisan objections to raising the minimum wage could derail the legislation.
Wells Fargo has agreed to pay an additional $70 million to resolve claims from thousands of mortgage consultants alleging the bank stiffed them by clawing back hourly wages and vacation time from their earned sales commissions, adding to the $25 million it has already paid, the workers told a California federal judge Friday.
Airlines will face stiffer headwinds navigating various state rules on flight crew hours now that the Ninth Circuit has upheld California's meal and rest break regulations, finding they don't interfere with federal aviation safety regulations and therefore still apply to flight attendants, even those mostly working out-of-state.
Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. has agreed to pay $15 million to resolve class claims that the restaurant chain improperly failed to pay overtime to management trainees based on a controversial U.S. Department of Labor overtime expansion rule, according to a motion filed Friday in New Jersey federal court.
A New York City grocer denied workers overtime pay despite requiring them to work well over 40 hours and improperly paid them a lower tipped minimum wage, according to a proposed collective action filed in federal court.
Employment law cases dominate the March oral argument schedule for the Third Circuit, which will consider appeals by an ex-AT&T manager seeking to revive her workplace bias claims and by a Pennsylvania transit contractor and deputy medical examiners fighting to undo defeats in overtime lawsuits.
Denny's restaurants failed to properly inform its servers of its tipped-wages policy and should have tracked the time they were doing side jobs like cleaning that didn't generate tips, a Pennsylvania federal judge has ruled in a proposed class action.
A Long Beach, California, ordinance granting a pay bump for frontline grocery store workers survived an attempt by grocers to block it, after a federal judge said the grocers hadn't shown they would succeed on their claims that the law was illegal.
A modeling agency has urged a New York federal judge to toss a model's unpaid wages lawsuit against the company, arguing that she wants to "have her cake and eat it too" by grounding her claims in two incompatible realities that defy logic.
The U.S. Department of Labor received around 1,500 comments responding to its proposal to delay a Trump-era rule establishing a test for determining independent contractor status, including responses by industry representatives urging the agency against a delay.
The U.S. Department of Labor withdrew Trump-era opinion letters that addressed circumstances when workers are entitled to pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act and backed off a plan to mandate electronic filing in cases before its administrative law judges. Here, Law360 summarizes recent wage and hour developments involving the DOL.
The U.S. Senate parliamentarian said Thursday that the $15 minimum wage provision proposed as a part of the latest COVID-19 pandemic relief package is not appropriate for inclusion, according to releases from several elected officials.
Barnes & Noble will pay $200,000 to a group of former cafe workers to resolve claims that it unlawfully denied them overtime pay, as well as $700,000 to cover attorney fees and costs in the four-and-a-half-year-old case, the workers told a Manhattan federal judge Thursday.
A California federal judge on Thursday rejected the NCAA's bid to pause discovery in two antitrust suits over student-athlete compensation, finding that pausing the cases while the U.S. Supreme Court takes up related litigation may disadvantage the athletes as their name and likeness rights lose value after graduation.
A California federal judge pushed Uber drivers Thursday to explain how their misclassification lawsuit should go forward in the wake of a successful state ballot measure that allows app-based companies to treat workers as independent contractors, telling their lawyer "the will of the voters is clearly against" his clients.
Rounding time that workers spend on meal breaks goes against the purpose of California wage and labor laws, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday in a closely watched case that could force employers to change timekeeping practices.
An overtime lawsuit by restaurant workers against a Mexican-American restaurant chain can proceed, a Kansas federal judge ruled, rejecting the chain's arguments that the main server behind the action didn't demonstrate she is owed any overtime pay.
Carpenters who worked on the MGM National Harbor Resort in Maryland should not be paid for the daily hours spent in a company shuttle to their work site, according to a decision in the Maryland Court of Special Appeals.
The employment practices of financial services technology provider nCino Inc. are being scrutinized by the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust unit, the company said Thursday in a securities filing, revealing the agency's latest probe of competition issues in labor markets.
A Michigan bottled water company can't use "alternative facts" not in the complaint to dodge a putative collective action from a former truck driver claiming the company kept drivers on the clock but failed to pay them proper overtime, a federal judge ruled Thursday.
The Ninth Circuit should reverse a district court ruling that Los Angeles County was not responsible for paying overtime compensation to a conditionally certified collective of home health care providers because the county controlled aspects of their employment, the providers argued.
Newly minted EEOC Chair Charlotte Burrows will have 45 days to reassess a Trump-era pay data sharing policy that a California-led coalition of states says is illegal, according to a federal court order Thursday that freezes the states' suit.
The U.S. Department of Labor said Wednesday that it is delaying tip pool and tip credit regulations it finalized near the end of the Trump administration but that had not yet taken effect, citing public comments supporting a postponement made by nine attorneys general, a law firm and advocacy groups.
7-Eleven franchise owners can't have the Ninth Circuit weigh in on a California federal court decision that a certain worker classification test applied to them in their suit alleging they were misclassified as independent contractors, a federal judge has ruled, denying their request for an appeal while the case advances.
Palm Beach County has urged a Florida federal judge to dismiss a suit by three golf course workers claiming they were improperly classified as "volunteers," arguing the workers couldn't prove they expected compensation.
The recent federal and state trend toward strengthening equal pay laws is sure to gain momentum, so it is now more important than ever before for employers to develop pay equity strategies, says Erin Connell at Orrick.
As Massachusetts employers consider employee requests for benefits under the state's recently effective paid parental and family leave program, they must also evaluate how the law intersects with other leave requirements, such as the federal Family and Medical Leave Act and the Massachusetts Parental Leave Act, says Stéphanie Smith at Casner & Edwards.
Though recently passed ordinances mandating "hero pay" for certain grocery store workers in California and Washington are well-intentioned, they do not protect essential workers equally and are likely illegal, says Anthony Caso at Chapman University's Fowler School of Law.
As remote work complicates Fair Labor Standards Act compliance, employers would do well to remain up to date on what constitutes reasonable diligence in monitoring overtime, minimum wage and other compensation issues, say Daniel Stern and Elizabeth Voss at Dykema.
With the $15 per hour minimum wage looking like a done deal in California, companies with employees at or near the current earnings threshold to qualify for exemptions may find that in some cases, reclassifications make sense, say Mark Kemple and Anthony Guzman at Greenberg Traurig.
With Democrats now controlling Congress and the White House, class action litigation may flourish in the coming years — which will be good both for consumers and for well-behaving companies who would otherwise lose market share and profits to unpoliced cheaters, says Daniel Karon at Karon LLC.
New York employers would do well to reexamine compliance on family leave and anti-discrimination accommodations following the recent release of guidance over state COVID-19 policies and federal regulation on vaccines, says Jonathan Trafimow at Moritt Hock.
Recent cases in New York and Florida illustrate that when drafting annual bonus provisions for executives, it is essential for all parties to ensure that the language does not create any ambiguity under the common law of contracts and complies with Section 409A of the Internal Revenue Code, says Steven Sholk at Gibbons.
New, stronger Occupational Safety and Health Administration guidance under President Joe Biden leaves no doubt that the agency expects employers to involve employees directly in developing programs for COVID-19 infection prevention, and the time for employers to reexamine current measures is now, say Robert Nichols and Caroline Melo at Bracewell.
The Fifth Circuit's recent decision in Swales v. KLLM announced a more rigorous gatekeeping method for district courts to use when deciding whether to send notice to potential claimants in Fair Labor Standards Act collective actions, but for employers the value of avoiding sending notice may not be worth the expense of early discovery, say Margaret Allen and Tayler Bragg at Sidley.
Ineffective or inappropriate notice can violate constitutional rights of class members in wage and hour actions, which means texts, emails, social media, workplace postings and in-person deliveries are worth exploring as alternatives or additions to postage, especially when high employee turnover or a transient workforce is involved, say Christine Webber and Brian Corman at Cohen Milstein.
The California Supreme Court's decision last month in Vazquez v. Jan-Pro Franchising International, that the ABC test for independent contractor classification adopted in Dynamex applies retroactively, overlooks whether the 2018 decision retains any independent force after the passage of A.B. 5, say James Speyer and Vanessa Adriance at Arnold & Porter.
Recent activity at the National Labor Relations Board, such as the Trump administration's failed attempt to end Obama-era representation-case procedure, has not slowed the policy pendulum and shows that opting for rulemaking over adjudication poses the risk of judicial backlash, say former NLRB Chairman Mark Gaston Pearce, now at the Georgetown Law Center, and Amanda Jaret at the United Food and Commercial Workers.