Fair Labor Standards Act

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Schools are out for the summer and many college and graduate students are looking for experience in what they hope will be their chosen careers.  Employer’s looking to provide that experience through the use of unpaid internships must understand the rules that qualify an internship for "unpaid" status or unwittingly create potential wage and hour…

The Fair Labor Standards Act is the federal law that requires most employers to pay a minimum wage and overtime.  The FLSA also includes an anti-retaliation provision that prohibits an employer from discharging any employee who has "filed a complaint" under the FLSA because of that complaint.  The issue at the high court in Kasten v. Saint-Gobain…

Employers often consider asserting counterclaims against employees who file lawsuits against them.  Most lawyers representing employers counsel against filing counterclaims except in exceptional cases (e.g., an employee’s theft of trade secrets or breach of a covenant not to compete). However, where an employer pays an employee valuable severance benefits in return for a release…

Last year I wrote about the risks associated with providing company issued cell-phones or PDA’s to nonexempt employees.  Since that post, there continues to be lawsuits filed seeking unpaid overtime for the off-the-clock time nonexempt employees spend reading and responding to work-related e-mails.  The most recent example is that of a police sergeant for the City of…

Lawyers prosecuting and defending wage and hour misclassification cases (i.e., exempt/nonexempt and employee/contractor) will emphasize how fact intensive these inquiries can be.   The importance of factual distinctions in litigating misclassification cases is demonstrated by two cases recently decided by the Fifth Circuit.  In Cromwell v. Driftwood Electrical Contractors, a panel of the…

In another cable splicer misclassification case arising in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, the Fifth Circuit affirmed a trial court decision that Louis Thibault was an independent contractor rather than an employee. Therefore, he was not entitled to overtime under the FLSA.

Thibault owned a business in his home state of Delaware selling picnic tables, storage…

The Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division issued its second Administrator’s Interpretation.   The Administrator Interpretations are issued by the Division in areas where it believes it is useful to clarify the law as it relates to an entire industry, a category of employees, or to all employees.

Administrator’s Interpretation No. 2010-2 discusses the Fair Labor Standards Act’s…

There has been a significant amount of litigation against employers over the compensability of work time for putting on and taking off safety-related clothing and equipment prior to the start of a shift but necessary for the work to be performed.  For example, Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation recently agreed to pay $1 million in back wages to settle a…

Recently I wrote about the risks posed by misclassifying employees as independent contractors.   In an unpublished opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (the federal appellate court that hears appeals from Texas) reversed a summary judgment awarded in favor of a company that had classified two cable splicers who performed post-Katrina telecommunications…