In 2010, the California Attorney General’s office filed a lawsuit in the Superior Court for the State of California in Los Angeles against eight car washes across the state alleging that the businesses frequently denied employees minimum wage and overtime, denied employees adequate meal and rest breaks, and failed to pay wages owed to workers who quit or were terminated. The plaintiffs sought compensation for lost wages, civil penalties, and injunctive relief to prevent the car washes from engaging in further violations.

According to the allegations, the car washes required the workers to report to work early but did not pay the workers until several hours later when business began to pick up during the day. Additionally, the lawsuit claims that many of the car wash employees received bad checks that could not be cashed due to insufficient funds.

California Attorney General Harris stated that she is “pleased that the resolution of this case will allow workers to receive the pay they are owed” because the “workers at these car washes were taken advantage of by unscrupulous employers who illegally denied them the pay and benefits they earned.”

In addition to the $1 million of unpaid wages and civil penalties, the settlement requires the car washes to pay $50,000 in various employment taxes.

The Employment Law Group® law firm has an extensive nationwide wage and hour practice representing employees whose rights have been violated.

A former Staples employee, Vikki Park, filed the class action lawsuit in November 2010, claiming that Staples violated California laws which mandate that employers pay employees for their unused accrued vacation hours. The lawsuit alleges that Staples’ policy of requiring part-time workers to be actively employed on their employment anniversary dates in order to receive their annual vacation pay constitutes, in effect, “an illegal forfeiture”.

The settlement agreement provides awards to three classes of employees:  those who were denied vacation pay since July 2008, those who did not receive wages upon termination since November 2008, and those who were denied floating holiday pay since November 2006.

The $5 million settlement also resolves two other similar lawsuits brought by employees of Staples stores in California.

The Employment Law Group® law firm has an extensive nationwide wage and hour practice representing employees whose rights have been violated.

In March 2011, Judge Nathaniel M. Gordon for the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts certified a class of the Massachusetts baristas who had worked for Starbucks during the past six years.  The court also ruled that Starbucks’ tip policy violated state law.

In June 2011, the US. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit refused to review the ruling of the district court. The class action dispute continued through the summer and fall of 2011, as Starbucks argued that the state tip law was unfair and deprived supervisors of their pay. In response, the plaintiffs argued that Starbucks could have raised its supervisors’ wages by $2 an hour.   

The damages award will be divided into two time periods. The judge decided not to treble damages for the period prior to July 11, 2008, but did treble the damages for the period after July 11, 2008, as required in an amendment to the Massachusetts tip sharing statute.

The Employment Law Group® law firm has an extensive nationwide wage and hour practice representing employees whose rights have been violated.

Final approval of the settlement deal awaits the U.S. Supreme Court’s determination of the overtime status of the drug sales representatives involved in another suit.  Final approval of the settlement would resolve the wage-and-hour claims that the sales representatives initially brought in 2006, in addition to later claims pertaining to a more recent period.  The final approval hearing is slated to take place on May 31, 2012.

Pharmaceutical companies have often classified drug sales representatives as being exempt from the overtime protections of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA); however, in recent years many FLSA cases have challenged this policy.

In the present case, In Re: Novartis Wage and Hour Litigation, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held in July 2010 that the Novartis sales representatives were entitled to receive overtime pay.  The Court relied on an amicus brief filed by the Department of Labor (DOL) that urged the Court to interpret FLSA regulations in a manner that would find sales representatives not exempt from overtime protection.

Last February the Ninth Circuit ruled in a similar class action lawsuit against GlaxoSmithKline that sales representatives are considered ‘outside sales employees’ under FLSA and are therefore exempt from overtime benefits.

The Supreme Court denied Novartis’ petition for certiorari but agreed to review the GlaxoSmithKline decision. The Supreme Court’s decision on whether drug sales representatives are covered by federal overtime protections is expected later this year.

The Employment Law Group® law firm has an extensive nationwide wage and hour practice representing employees whose rights under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) have been violated.

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) mandates that non-exempt employees receive minimum wage and overtime pay. O’Neill claims that although she was a salaried employee, she was misclassified as exempt from FLSA protections.

O’Neill filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.  She alleged that Gaga expected her to be on call at any time of the day or night, which often interfered with O’Neill’s ability to sleep and eat meals. In addition, O’Neill was responsible for “ensuring the promptness of a towel following a shower and serving as a personal alarm clock to keep [Gaga] on schedule” and was not compensated beyond her salary of $75,000 a year. A spokeswoman for Gaga said that the lawsuit is “completely without merit.”

The Employment Law Group^® law firm has an extensive employment practice and represents employees nationally who have been victims of nonpayment.

The suit was originally filed in a state court in California in February 2010 and later transferred to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California in May 2010. The suit alleged that GEO’s pay policies disfavored nonexempt workers and that such workers were routinely paid less than what they earned. According to the complaint, the company attempted to “increase profitability by creating and implementing a system that fails to properly compensate its California employees for off-the-clock work and overtime and for missed and/or interrupted meal and rest breaks and vacation pay.”

The settlement agreement also provides $250,000 in attorneys’ fees to the plaintiffs, $13,500 in claims administration fees and an additional $10,000 as a service award for Ms. Morales. Approval of the settlement is not a finding of wrongdoing nor is it an admission of any wrongdoing by GEO.

GEO was acquired by General Electric Company in 2002 and is manufacturer of equipment used in water filtration and treatment systems.

Workers at the Nike contractor, PT Nikomas Gemilang IY, allege that they were routinely forced to perform an hour of overtime off the clock in order to meet targeted production levels. Local unions complained that the workers performed nearly 600,000 hours of unpaid overtime over the past two years. After 11 months of negotiations, the company agreed to settle with the workers for approximately $1 million. Each worker involved in the settlement – 4,500 – will be entitled to receive approximately $222.

A Nike spokesman, Brian Strong, commented that “the decisive actions taken by the PT Nikomas Gemilang IY plant clearly demonstrate how seriously they are taking the allegations of workplace misconduct” and that “Nike commends the factory on their action plan and efforts to correct inadequacies in current policies designed to protect the rights of workers.”

Strong also indicated that the factory will take further steps to ensure that workers’ rights are respected in the future and announced that the factory will hire an outside organization approved by the Fair Labor Association – a Washington, DC-based advocacy group – to monitor the workers’ conditions.

According to reports, more than 160,000 people are involved in the manufacture of Nike products in Indonesia.

The settlement involves an agreement between Vitamin Shoppe and the suit’s lead plaintiff, Julio Vasquez, who alleged that the company violated the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) by giving him the title of store manager in order to avoid paying him and others overtime pay.

Vasquez brought suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in November 2010 and claimed that Vitamin Shoppe listed him and over 400 other store clerks as “store managers” so the company could pay the clerks salaries and not be liable for paying overtime wages required by the FLSA.

In July 2011 Judge Laura Taylor Swaine decided not to certify a class of over 400 employees from across the company’s branches in 40 states but instead certified a smaller class consisting of employees from just seven of Vitamin Shoppe’s stores clustered around the New York City area.

In her ruling, Judge Swain wrote that the “plaintiff [did] not meet his burden” of showing that Vitamin Shoppe had misclassified its store clerks across all of the company’s locations sufficient for nationwide class certification.

The current settlement does not reveal the terms of the agreement apart from stipulating that it resolves the lawsuit in its entirety.

Oracle is a Delaware corporation with its primary place of business in California, best known for its database management software.  The three plaintiffs are “instructors” – to use Oracle’s term – who lived outside of California but trained customers in California and other states on how to use Oracle software.  They allege Oracle misclassified them as “teachers,” a class of workers exempt from the generous overtime provisions of the California Labor Code.

The Ninth Circuit initially held in favor of the plaintiffs, but ultimately sought the opinion of the California Supreme Court in answering the following question of state law:

Does the California Labor Code apply to overtime work performed in California for a California-based employer by out-of-state plaintiffs in the circumstances of this case, such that overtime pay is required for work in excess of eight hours per day or in excess of forty hours per week?

Concurring with the Ninth Circuit, the California Supreme Court answered yes, holding that nonresidents who work in California are entitled to overtime pay pursuant to the California Labor Code.

When Congress passed the FLSA in 1938, it established a federal minimum wage and a mandate to pay overtime for hours worked exceeding 40 hours per week. However, some job categories were not initially covered by the FLSA, including domestic service workers employed directly by a household. In 1974 Congress amended the law to extend the FLSA’s wage protections to nearly all domestic service workers but included an exemption for workers who provided companionship for the elderly and for babysitters.

The Department of Labor cited the “dramatic transformation” of the home healthcare industry since 1975, the rapidly increasing demand for in-home care, and the relatively stagnant wage growth of in-home care employees as reasons for the proposed rules. The Department maintains that today’s workers who are employed by home care staffing agencies are not the sort of workers that Congress intended to exempt from FSLA protection when it passed the companionship exemption (i.e. babysitters), but rather are “professional caregivers” who perform medically-related tasks for which training is typically a requirement and should be entitled to FLSA protections.

The issue gained attention in 2007 when the Supreme Court decided in Long Island Care at Home, Ltd. v. Evelyn Coke, that a home care aide who worked up to 70 hours per week did not qualify for overtime compensation under the current FSLA regulations. The court said that any changes to such regulations must come from either Congress or the Department of Labor.

While the proposed changes will broaden FLSA regulations to ensure that home health workers are subject to federal minimum wage and overtime law, the proposed rules still exempt from minimum wage and overtime regulations some workers who are employed as companions by individuals for activities such as engaging in hobbies and talking walks. Under the definition of the proposed rules, companionship services would be limited to activities that directly relate to offering ‘fellowship’ and protection to those who are not capable of caring for themselves. Only workers whose duties include providing personal care (e.g. assistance with dressing and grooming) less than 20% of the time would remain exempt from the FLSA’s minimum wage and overtime protections.

Among the other changes in the proposed rules is a requirement for the employers of live-in domestic workers to keep track of the specific hours that such employees work, instead of merely reaching a work agreement with employees. The proposed rules also clarify that workers employed by third-party employers – such as staffing agencies – are not exempt from the minimum wage and overtime protections.

Currently state minimum wage and overtime protection laws for in-home care providers vary widely. For example, 16 states ensure that most in-home care workers receive minimum wage and overtime protection and 5 states and the District of Columbia require that such workers receive the minimum wage but do not mandate overtime eligibility. However, according to the Obama administration, 29 states do not give home health care workers either minimum wage or overtime protection.

The public is invited to submit comments on the proposed rules at www.regulations.gov. Further information including Frequently Asked Questions answered by the Department of Labor and a Comparison of Current vs. Proposed Companionship Regulations chart can be found at http://www.dol.gov/whd/flsa/companionNPRM.htm.