California employers are facing a healthy dose of new requirements next month as the notice and posting provisions in the state’s recently enacted paid sick leave law take effect. To help employers comply before ringing in the New Year, the California Labor Commissioner has published a revised Wage Theft Notice and a new workplace poster.
Recently, there’s been a wave of Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) rulings adverse to employers in the adult entertainment industry. Early this year, a Southern District of New York judge approved an $8 million settlement for a class of dancers at an adult establishment who alleged that they were misclassified as independent contractors. See In re: Penthouse Executive Club Compensation Litigation, Case No. 1:10-cv-01145, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5864 (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 14, 2014). And just last month, the court in Hart, et al. v. Rick’s Cabaret Int’l, Inc., Case No. 1:09-cv-03043, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 160264 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 14, 2014) which previously had held that dancers at the New York club were employees under the FLSA, denied a motion to decertify the class and awarded almost $11 million in damages to the dancers for FLSA violations.
On October 8, 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc. v. Busk. In Busk, plaintiffs allege that, under the FLSA, their employer should have compensated them and other warehouse employees for time spent passing through the employer’s security clearance at the end of their shifts, including their time spent waiting in line to be searched. Busk is an important case to watch because the Court may provide employers with wide-ranging guidance on what pre-work or post-work tasks are compensable.
“Sometimes surrender is the best option.” That is how Judge Raymond J. Dearie of the Eastern District of New York begins his opinion in Anjum v. J.C. Penney Co., Inc., before denying J.C. Penney’s motion to dismiss a putative Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) collective action based on the company’s offer to pay the claims of four named plaintiffs with offers of judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 68—a strategy often referred to as “picking off.” Even though the court rejected J.C. Penney’s picking off attempt in this case, the judge’s opinion in Anjum recognizes the validity of this tactic and provides some practical lessons for defense counsel looking to successfully pick off an FLSA collective in the Second Circuit.
After the California Supreme Court’s recent decision in Iskanian v. CLS Transportation, which held that PAGA representative action waivers are unenforceable under California law, employers have struggled with whether to retain such waivers in their arbitration agreements. The answer to whether such waivers should be retained is not as straightforward as one might expect.
On October 10, 2014, the White House hosted a listening session regarding President Obama’s “Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces” Executive Order (discussed in detail in a prior Orrick Employment blog post here), one of many new laws imposing significant new requirements on federal contractors. Representatives of the Professional Services Council met with Secretary of Labor Tom Perez and White House officials to urge changes to the Order, which (among other things) requires prospective federal contractors and subcontractors to track and report a comprehensive list of labor and employment law violations, bars larger existing contractors from requiring pre-dispute arbitration agreements of certain claims (including claims under Title VII), and requires contractors to provide employees with additional information on overtime and hours worked in paychecks. READ MORE
On September 28, 2014, Governor Brown signed into law AB 1897, which created California Labor Code § 2810.3. The new law requires companies who use workers provided by staffing agencies to “share with a labor contractor all civil legal responsibility and civil liability” for (1) the payment of wages and (2) the provision of workers’ compensation insurance.
A district court in New York dismissed the putative collective action filed by a contract attorney who performed document review for Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom LLP (“Skadden”) for fifteen months. See Lola v. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”), an employee is exempt from overtime as a professional employee if he or she is “the holder of a valid license . . . permitting the practice of law” and “who is actually engaged in the practice thereof.” 29 C.F.R. § 541.3. The named plaintiff and proposed class representative, David Lola, was a licensed attorney, and, therefore, the dispositive question was whether he was practicing law such that he qualified for the exemption.
Recent decisions by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the California Supreme Court have thrown a road block in the way of employers relying on a federal statute to preempt certain state wage-and-hour law claims. At issue is whether the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (“FAAAA”) precludes truck drivers from asserting claims for meal and rest break, minimum wage, and other violations under California law. At least for now, the road is clear for such claims.
Last week, the California Supreme Court issued its decision in Peabody v. Time Warner Cable, Inc., deciding that employers may not apply commission payments to earlier pay periods for the purposes of establishing that an employee meets the minimum wage component under the commissioned employee exemption.
