Over the last few years, we have written about misclassification issues arising out of the use of unpaid interns to perform work. A recent case from a New York State court has just made it more difficult for such interns to assert class action claims for unpaid wages. In Rodriquez…
Today, the U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL) issued its Final Rule modifying overtime requirements under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”). The Final Rule makes material changes to the application of overtime exemptions, and will take effect on December 1, 2016. In 2014, President Obama directed the Secretary of Labor…
Although it is still unclear when the U.S. Department of Labor will finalize the proposed rules revising the white collar exemptions to overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act, earlier this month a group of bipartisan members of Congress signed off on a letter to the Secretary of Labor, expressing…
Yesterday, we reported in our blog, What Happened to those Federal Rules Revising the White Collar Exemption to Overtime Pay?, that Solicitor of Labor, M. Patricia Smith, had announced at an American Bar Association conference that the proposed rules revising the salary levels for the white collar exemptions under the Fair…
Our July 2015 blog, Department of Labor Publishes Long Awaited Proposed Rules Revising White Collar Exemptions to Overtime, reported that the U.S. Department of Labor had released for public comment modifications to the “white collar” exemptions to overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The public comment period…
As the end of the year rapidly approaches, new statutes affecting employers and employees are set to become effective. Among them is a New York City ordinance, titled “Mass Transit Benefits Law,” which requires every employer with twenty or more full-time employees in New York City to offer those full-time…
Section 193 of the New York Labor Law (NYLL) prohibits an employer from deducting amounts from an employee’s wages, except for amounts that are both for the benefit of the employee and are approved by the employee in writing. In July 2012, we wrote about the narrow scope of permissible…
Senator Jack Martins, Chairman of the New York State Senate Labor Committee, invited the New York State Restaurant Association to testify at a public hearing today regarding the Fast Food Wage Board process, which resulted in a proposal to gradually increase the minimum wage of fast food workers to $15/hour. …
This month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held in Cheeks v. Freeport Pancake House, Inc. that parties are not permitted to enter into private settlements of wage and hour claims arising under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) without obtaining approval from the court, if a…
In a past blog we wrote about a case in which movie studio interns who worked on the movie, “Black Swan,” claimed that they were misclassified as interns and were really employees, who should have been paid at least the minimum wage and overtime pay for hours worked beyond 40…