Fair Labor Standards Act. FLSA

In Nationwide Conditional Certification, Evidence Still Matters

As employers well know, the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) permits employees to file suits on behalf of themselves and others who are “similarly situated.” 29 U.S.C. 216(b).  In practice, this often means large employers find themselves defending against a single or handful of employees attempting to certify a collective action that includes hundreds or thousands of employees nationwide.  Many times, the collective group includes employees in states where the plaintiffs have never worked.  However, as a NY federal court recently reminded us, while plaintiffs’ evidentiary burden is not onerous at this stage, lack of knowledge about the employees in other states continues to be an obstacle for plaintiffs in obtaining conditional certification.  On the opposite side of the coin, this failure of evidence can be utilized by defendant employers to narrow the proposed collective group or altogether prevent the conditional certification of a collective action.  READ MORE

Think Your Workers are Independent Contractors? Not So Fast Says the DOL

On July 15, 2015, the U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”) issued an Administrator’s Interpretation that purports to clarify on one of the most challenging legal questions facing employers today:  are certain workers employees or independent contractors?  Notably absent from the guidance, however, is any specific reference to workers who provide services through “on-demand” companies like Uber, and Lyft who use technology to deliver traditional services more efficiently by connecting consumers directly with service providers.  This is surprising since it seems that the DOL’s renewed focus on misclassification has stemmed in large part from the slew of pending on-demand worker lawsuits in which the classification tests have proven very difficult to apply.

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