News for 2009

EEOC violated FLSA rules for years

ishimaru 100x100Talk about irony. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) – an advocate of workplace fairness – has been willfully violating the Fair Labor Standards Act for several years, according to a report in the Washington Post. An arbitrator has decided that the EEOC unfairly and illegally gave compensatory time off instead of overtime pay to its employees throughout the country. The arbitrator said this system amounted to “forced volunteering.

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Will the great recession mean more FLSA lawsuits?

independent contractor 100x100An attorney representing a healthcare worker who is suing his employer for denied says that lawsuits filed under the Fair Labor Standards Act may become more common during the economic recession. The plaintiff alleges that his employer, Delta-T Group and Delta-T Group Social Service Staffing, Inc. denied him compensation by wrongly classifying him as an independent contractor. Because he is not appropriately classified as an employee of the company, the plaintiff cannot receive the same benefits that regular employees of the company received.

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class action filed against Alabama company for FLSA overtime violations

buff rock 100x100A filed by employees against Buffalo Rock Co. of Birmingham, Alabama has been certified as a class action , according to a report in the Birmingham News. Workers filed the in the U.S. District Court for Birmingham in 2007, alleging the company’s failure to compensate some of its sales and delivery employees for work.

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Missouri restaurant pays back wages and penalties for FLSA violations

waiter 100x100The U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division has cited a Missouri restaurant with numerous violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act, according to a report in the Bolivar Herald-Free Press.

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Card dealers win labor case against Palm Beach club

poker flush 100x100A group of poker dealers in Palm Beach, Florida won a in federal court this week filed against the Palm Beach Kennel Club Entertainment Complex for violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The workers alleged that managers of the club skimmed money off their tips to pay supervisors working the card room floor. According to the Palm Beach Post, the club failed to prove to the jury that it operated a legal tip pool under the FLSA regulations.

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FLSA compliance creates difficulties for Annapolis school secretaries

school secretary 100x100The Capital, a newspaper serving the Annapolis, Maryland area, recently ran an interesting article explaining how the Annapolis County school board has been violating the Fair Labor Standards Act for 30 years because it averaged pay for school secretaries rather than pay them specific hourly wages. The violation was discovered last year when school officials installed a new payroll system.

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Jury sides with plaintiffs in Staples class action lawsuit

staples ext 150x150Misclassification of store managers is a ruse sometimes used by businesses to avoid paying certain employees . As we reported in December, a federal appeals court upheld a $35.6 million judgment against Family Dollar Stores, Inc. for wrongly classifying store employees as managers and then denying them pay. Last week, a federal jury in the U.S. District Court for New Jersey ordered Staples, Inc., the world’s largest chain of office supply stores, to pay nearly $2.5 million to 343 plaintiffs because of similar violations to the Fair Labor Standards Act.

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Class action lawsuit against Tyson Foods will proceed

tyson logo 150x150The U.S. District judge for the District of Kansas ruled this week that thousands of meatpacking workers may move forward against Tyson Foods, Inc. as a class action suit. The workers allege that they were denied and other forms of compensation by the company. The ruling was a positive development for the workers, comprised mainly of Latin American immigrants who couldn’t afford to proceed individually.

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Woman crusades against epidemic of wage theft

iwj 150x150Kim Bobo believes that employers in the United States are stealing from their workers. Not just nickels and dimes and not just in isolated incidents. She claims that the theft is rampant — that it has become a “national crisis at this moment in our nation” to the tune of $19 billion per year in unpaid alone.

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Grocery chain cited for multiple child labor violations

The U.S. Department of Labor has fined Hy-Vee, Inc., a Des Moines, Iowa-based grocery chain, with multiple violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act, including a number of child labor violations in four of the company’s Nebraska stores.

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