Twelve female Novartis employees filed the lawsuit, alleging they received less pay than their male counterparts, were promoted less frequently, and had to endure a hostile work environment. The women sought damages from $190 million to $285 million, calculated as two to three percent of the company’s $9.5 billion revenues it made in 2009.

The jury, comprised of five women and four men, agreed, opening the door for more than 5,500 other female employees of Novartis’ United States operations. The multinational company is based in Basel, Switzerland.

Additional employees applying for compensation under the ruling will likely be processed by a court-appointed special master, who will determine their damages on an individual basis. U.S. District Court Judge Colleen McMahon will decide a lump sum for back pay, lost benefits, and adjusted wages that will distributed to the plaintiffs. Attorneys handling the case said they were seeking $37 million to cover back pay.

During testimony, an attorney for the original plaintiffs told jurors that “to Novartis, discrimination is one big joke.”

“There was an old boys’ network at Novartis running rampant. The discrimination continues to this very day. Absolutely nothing was ever done to help women at Novartis,” the attorney said.

Evidence brought before the court included the behavior and actions of one district manager who plaintiffs claimed was especially abusive. The man would show them pornographic pictures and ask them to sit on his lap, yet he wasn’t fired until two years after the complaint was filed in 2004.

“He wasn’t that bad a manager. He was just terrible with women,” said Novartis attorney Richard Schnadig – a phrase that helped the jury see that the company and its attorney still had no clue what it had done wrong.

Yet Schnadig urged the jury not to react with emotion after hearing damaging testimony.

“The company is taking everything you said to heart and is going to change,” he said. “Be fair to us.”

Novartis attorneys say they will appeal the verdict.

SOURCE: Fair Labor Standards Act › Jury orders Novartis to pay $250 million for sex discrimination

According to a report by Reuters, the San Francisco court determined the lawsuit can proceed as a class action, covering claims made by women who have worked at Wal-Mart since June 2001. The news agency reports that a lower court will have to decide whether women who worked for Wal-Mart between 1998 and 2001 are eligible to join the class.

The case has been appealed three times since it was originally filed in San Francisco federal court in 2001. Wal-Mart lost two previous rulings in trial court and was defeated again in appeals court in 2007.  According to a report on CNBC, Wal-Mart had argued that women who allege discrimination should file individual lawsuits, claiming there would be too many litigants in a class action to defend. The court disagreed, although it was by no means a unanimous decision – the court was split 6-5 on the vote to allow the case to proceed as a class action.

Plaintiffs in the case allege Wal-Mart directed female employees away from management positions and did not provide them with opportunities for advancement. Wal-Mart argues that decisions about promotions and pay raises are at the discretion of its managers, not the company.

This case has been touted as the largest sex-discrimination class-action lawsuit in U.S. history.

SOURCE: Fair Labor Standards Act › Wal-Mart on losing end of decision regarding sex-discrimination lawsuit

The plaintiffs allege that Wal-Mart, the world’s largest private employer, paid female employees less than their male coworkers, promoted females less frequently than men, and made them wait longer for promotions than men when they were given the opportunity to move up.

The original lawsuit was filed by Wal-Mart employee Betty Dukes in 2001. Dukes and six other plaintiffs contend that Wal-Mart routinely passed women up for consideration for management positions, keeping them in lower level jobs such as cashiers with little hope of promotion. One plaintiff said she was unqualified to manage because she couldn’t stack 50-pound bags of dog food.

The plaintiffs moved to form the class action in 2001, extending the case to all women who had worked at Wal-Mart since 1998. A trial judge certified the case as a class action in 2004.

The suit will now cover the claims of women who have worked at Wal-Mart since June 2001. A lower court will determine whether additional women who were employed by Wal-Mart between 1998 and 2001 may join the class action.

Today’s sharply divided 6-5 ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco left Wal-Mart considering a final appeal to the United States Supreme Court. The retail giant has fought the lawsuit vigorously since 2001, arguing the group of women represented by the class action would be too large and unmanageable and that cases involving gender discrimination should be tried individually.

An 11-member panel that heard Wal-Mart’s arguments last year disagreed. “Although the size of this class action is large, mere size does not render a case unmanageable,” the court stated.

Given the potential number of plaintiffs in this class action lawsuit, a ruling against Wal-Mart could cost the retailer tens of billions of dollars.

SOURCE: Fair Labor Standards Act › Sex discrimination class action against Wal-Mart may proceed

Milwaukee-based Northwestern Mutual denies the allegations, pointing to a similar trial it was involved in last year. In that case, a federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled in favor of Northwestern Mutual, saying it had the right to retain certain employees as independent contractors.

The plaintiffs named in the San Diego lawsuit contend that they had little to no autonomy and decision making capabilities. They also allege that they had to work more than eight hours per day and more than 40 hours per week without overtime. All three plaintiffs were employed as financial representatives of Northwestern Mutual, two of them in California and the other in Georgia.

In addition to financial compensation, the plaintiffs also seek the reclassification of hundreds of former and current Northwestern Mutual representatives from independent contractors to full-time employees.

Because the Fair Labor Standards Act extends only to company employees, some corporations will classify employees as independent contractors to avoid FLSA rules and save money. Corporations that classify employees as independent contractors not only avoid paying minimum wage and overtime, they also avoid paying state and federal taxes on those “exempt” employees.

Through its independently owned agencies, Northwestern Mutual employs approximately 7,000 financial representatives in the U.S. The company provides insurance, annuities, mutual funds, and, ironically, employee benefit services.

SOURCE: Fair Labor Standards Act › Northwestern Mutual reps sue company for FLSA violations

According to the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, compensable hours include all the time that an employee is required to be on the employer’s premises, on duty, or at a prescribed workplace. According to the lawsuit, the car wash company’s owners would clock out employees when the amount of business dropped, then clock employees back in when business picked up. The employees, however, were required to stay at work while they were off the clock.

The Wage and Hour Division says that problems adhering to Fair Labor Standards typically arise when employers “fail to recognize and count certain hours worked as compensable hours.”

In a report by the Tennessean, Megan Macareg, director of Middle Tennessee branch of Jobs with Justice, a national organization that defends workers against unfair employment practices, said the car wash employees “didn’t have anywhere to sit or eat.”

“To a large extent, the company has cleaned up its act, but the stealing of wages is a massive problem,” Macareg said.

Wage theft activist and author Kim Bobo traveled to Nashville to attend a rally celebrating the settlement. Bobo is the executive director of Interfaith Worker Justice, a Chicago-based organization that appeals to the shared convictions of all religions in protecting the rights of waged workers.

Bobo, who believes that wage theft has become an epidemic in the U.S., blames corporate greed, the tough economy, and lack of government involvement. “Over the last decade, we have seen an abdication of the role of the government enforcing labor laws,” she said.

SOURCE: Fair Labor Standards Act › Nashville workers settle FLSA complaint against employer

What looked like an American dream, however, quickly turned into an American nightmare. The suit alleges that defendants Five Star Contractors LLC, Knights Marine & Industrial Services, Inc., David Knight, and Brian Knight “manipulated the H-2B guest worker program and defrauded the U.S. government and vulnerable migrant workers to generate a large pool of easily exploitable workers that Defendants could use to provide on-call labor to Gulf Coast shipyards.”

Additionally, the suit alleges that the defendants “deceived foreign workers about the terms and conditions of work being offered and deceived the U.S. Government about their intent to comply with the terms of the program including federal, state, and local worker protection laws.”

The labor recruiters named as defendants in the case provide wage labor to shipyards along the Gulf Coast.

The workers, believing they would be gainfully and legally employed in the U.S., “plunged their families into debt to pay hiring, visa, and relocation fees and reluctantly turned over deeds to their houses with agents of Five Star,” the suit alleges.

“Upon arrival in Mississippi, they were transported to a surveillance labor camp consisting of windowless portable metal buildings while they waited weeks to be leased out. They waited weeks without work as their debts grew and they became increasingly desperate for Five Star and Knights Marine to comply with their contractual promises to workers and the U.S. Government.”

The Brazilian workers seek unspecified damages and a declaration that their rights were violated by the defendants. Charges include unlawful conduct, RICO violations, Fair Labor Standards Act violations, breach of contract, common-law fraud, and breach of good faith and fair dealing.

Source: AP

SOURCE: Fair Labor Standards Act › Brazilian workers sue Gulf Coast shipyard recruiters

According to the GAO report, the WHD “frequently responded inadequately to complaints, leaving low wage workers vulnerable to wage theft.” The GAO came to this conclusion after conducting a broad undercover investigation in which it filed 10 fictitious worker complaints in WHD district offices throughout the country.

“The undercover tests revealed sluggish response times, a poor complaint intake process, and failed conciliation attempts, among other problems,” the report states. The GAO also documented one case in which a WHD employee lied about investigating a claim when actually no work at all was done to investigate the fictitious claim.

One of the investigations was filed by a fictitious secretary in Virginia who complained that she was not being paid the minimum wage. The GAO’s fictitious employer did not refute the receptionist’s claim, but refused to pay the back wages owed anyway. The WHD investigator “accepted the refusal without question and informed the fictitious employee of his right to file a lawsuit.” The fictitious employee then asked why the WHD couldn’t be of more help and was told to contact his Congressman.

Another fictitious claim stated that children were using heavy machinery at a California meat packing facility. But 4 months later, the WHD still had not taken any action. In fact, the complaint was never recorded in the WHD’s database, even though the WDH claims that child labor complaints are its top priority.

It’s bad enough the workers in labor intensive jobs often find themselves preyed upon by unscrupulous employers. Add to that a bad economy in which some employers take desperate (and illegal) cost-cutting measures and top it off with an ineffective government bureaucracy, and you have to wonder:  why does the Fair Labor Standards Act exist if our Department of Labor won’t take even the smallest measures to enforce it? What recourse do workers have?

At the end of its undercover study, the GAO was still waiting for the WHD to begin investigating 3 of the fictitious claims, all of which had been delayed by months. During the course of the study, the GAO also exposed many real cases involving hundreds of workers whose employers the WHD never investigated.

According to the report, the “GAO found cases where it took over a year for WHD to respond to a complaint, cases closed based on unverified information provided by the employer, and cases dropped when the employer did not return phone calls.”

“GAO’s overall assessment of the WHD complaint intake, conciliation, and investigation processes found an ineffective system that discourages wage theft complaints,” the report states.

SOURCE: Fair Labor Standards Act › Department of Labor fails to uphold and enforce FLSA regulations

“As corporate budgets continue to tighten, more employers are looking to classify workers as independent contractors in an effort to reduce costs, such as overtime compensation, employee benefits, payroll taxes, unemployment compensation, and workers compensation,” the plaintiff’s attorney said. “The law is clear, however, that many of these workers do not qualify as independent contractors.”

A number of cases involving disputes over independent contractor classification have made it to the U.S. Supreme Court. The court has maintained there is no single test to determine the proper classification of a worker as an employee or independent contractor under FLSA regulations. “The total activity or situation” must be considered.

To determine the legal classification of a worker as an employee or independent contractor, the following factors must be considered:

• The extent to which the services rendered are an integral part of the principal’s business
• The permanency of the relationship
• The amount of the alleged contractor’s investment in facilities and equipment
• The nature and degree of control by the principal
• The alleged contractor’s opportunities for profit and loss
• The amount of initiative, judgment, or foresight in open market competition with others required for the success of the claimed independent contractor
• The degree of independent business organization and operation

A bill called the “Independent Contractor Proper Classification Act of 2007” was proposed to Congress but never became law.

SOURCE: Fair Labor Standards Act › Will the great recession mean more FLSA lawsuits?

Buffalo Rock is one of the country’s largest privately owned Pepsi-Cola bottlers with 14 distribution centers in Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. Its distribution area covers a population of 6.5 million.

Employees represented by the suit contend that Buffalo Rock violated the Fair Labor Standards Act when it failed to pay them and others in the company for work performed over the regular 40 hour work week.

“Buffalo Rock knowingly, intentionally and willfully violated the Fair Labor Standards Act by failing to pay plaintiffs and all similarly situated employees the overtime compensation to which defendant Buffalo Rock knew they were entitled,” the lawsuit says.

Buffalo Rock maintains that the FLSA’s overtime clause doesn’t apply to the overtime hours clocked by the workers represented by the lawsuit.

Provisions for overtime pay are a common basis for many lawsuits citing FLSA violations. FLSA regulations exempt certain workers, such as executive, administrative, professional and outside sales employees, from overtime. However, according to the Department of Labor, “employees generally must meet certain tests regarding their job duties and be paid on a salary basis at not less than $455 per week.” Misclassification of employees, unclear employment agreements, or simple misunderstanding of the law are common violations of FLSA provisions.

SOURCE: Fair Labor Standards Act › class action filed against Alabama company for FLSA overtime violations

According to the Palm Beach Post, the plaintiffs alleged that the club “operated an illegal tip pool knowingly” and with “reckless disregard for the law.” Despite their courtroom victory, however, the plaintiffs failed to persuade the jury of those counts.

An attorney for the poker dealers told the Palm Beach Post that a federal judge will determine how much back pay will be awarded to each dealer, estimating that the total amount would reach $130,000 plus attorney’s fees. Most of the plaintiffs are no longer employed at the Kennel Club.

The ruling will likely boost earnings for card dealers in other Florida clubs where money is commonly skimmed from card dealer tips to pay floor supervisors. According to the plantiffs’ attorney, some dealers could go from making $40,000 to $70,000 with full tips.

The attorney told the Post that the club was “stealing the wages that somebody earned. Period. So their bottom line wouldn’t be affected.”

“They were taking from somebody without them knowing it and giving it to somebody who didn’t deserve it,” he told the Post.

Federal labor regulations allow businesses to pay employees less than minimum wage if the employees “customarily and regularly receive tips.” Attorneys representing the dealers successfully argued that because the club paid dealers $3 below the minimum wage, it shouldn’t have claimed tips to compensate supervisors “who had no direct service contact with the public.”

The Palm Beach Kennel Club is an established dog racing track dating back to 1932. The club also offers simulcast racing, a poker room, and dining options.

SOURCE: Fair Labor Standards Act › Card dealers win labor case against Palm Beach club

The Capital

According to the FLSA, workers such as the school secretaries must be paid for the number of hours they work each week. Because some secretaries work fewer hours in the summer months, the county averaged their pay so that they would receive consistent checks throughout the year. The county stopped averaging the secretaries’ pay recently in order to comply with FLSA standards.

But the school secretaries’ union doesn’t like the change, which it claims is a violation of the secretaries’ employment contract. The union filed a lawsuit against the county in circuit court last December. The school board has asked the judge to dismiss the case.

An attorney for the school board told The Capital that the courts would likely side with the FLSA. “You can’t generally have a contract of any kind that goes against the law,” he told The Capital. “The law always trumps the contract language.”

Although the change doesn’t alter the secretaries’ total compensation, some advocates claim that it makes budgeting a lot more difficult. To steady any financial swings that FLSA compliance would create for the secretaries, the school board has offered to deposit a percent of each check into a savings account in an effort to mimic averaging their pay.

The union has a month to respond to the school board’s motion to dismiss the case.

SOURCE: Fair Labor Standards Act › FLSA compliance creates difficulties for Annapolis school secretaries

The store managers, represented in the class action lawsuit Stillman v. Staples, Inc., charged the retail giant with violating the law when it classified them as exempt and then failed to pay them for overtime. The jury agreed with the plaintiffs and found that Staples had acted willfully in breaking the law. The verdict came after a six-week trial. The amount awarded does not include attorneys’ fees and costs, which the plaintiffs may claim pursuant to FLSA laws.

Staples spokesman Paul Capelli said that the company may appeal the jury’s decision. “We firmly believe that we’re fully compliant with the law,” he said.

The lawsuit was one of many collective and class action lawsuits alleging the misclassification of store managers have been filed against Staples. It was also not the first suit filed against Staples for violations of the FLSA. In November 2007, Staples settled a class-action lawsuit in California for $38 million. That suit related to the classification of assistant managers by Staples stores in California and the retail chain’s failure to compensate the managers for overtime work.

SOURCE: Fair Labor Standards Act › Jury sides with plaintiffs in Staples class action lawsuit

Hourly wage workers from Tyson’s slaughterhouses in Holcomb and Emporia, Kansas, originally filed the case in May 1006. Together, the Kansas operations employ some 3,300 hourly workers. The workers allege that Tyson owes them millions of dollars in back pay for all the time they spend on the job.

The key issue in the case is whether Tyson should have to compensate workers for all of the time they spend putting on and removing protective gear, cleaning equipment, waiting for production lines to start, walking to and from work, break, and changing quarters, and working on unpaid meal breaks.

Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, the workers are seeking compensation for overtime. They are also seeking compensation for unpaid “straight time” at work under the Kansas Wage Payment Act.

In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that under the Fair Labor Standards Act, production workers must be compensated for doing anything that is “integral and indispensable” to the “principal activity” of the job they perform.

The ruling influenced Lungstrom’s decision last year to reject a motion by Tyson for summary judgment. In doing so, Lungstrum “ruled that whether standard protective clothing was ‘integral and indispensable’ to Tyson employees’ work was a factual question for a jury to decide,” according to a report in the Kansas City Star.

SOURCE: Fair Labor Standards Act › Class action lawsuit against Tyson Foods will proceed

Ramales is one of many who are suing companies over unfair compensation of the amount overtime worked. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires overtime to be paid to employees who work over the amount of hours prescribed in a week, which is usually 40 hours. Once an employee works more than his or her prescribed hours in a week, they should be compensated at time and one-half.

The FLSA was designed to help and protect employees from exploitation from their employers. However, employees are still being exploited by companies finding ways to get around paying overtime. Everybody is being hit hard by the failing economy, from big business to small businesses, but there is no excuse for companies to not compensate work that is earned.

One of the ways companies are getting around the rules of the FLSA is by giving employees the title of “manager.” The employees promoted to the title of “manager” are performing the same duties as hourly-paid workers and putting in the same amount of hours, yet on salary. At the end of the day, the salary that these “managers” are making is less than what they would be making at an hourly wage with time and a half overtime.

Beasley Allen has seen numerous cases in retail stores dealing with misclassifying of the “management” positions. But that is not the only industry that employes this tactic. Others include auto repair stores, service industry jobs, convenient stores and restaurant chains.

If you have been promoted to a “management” position and feel that you are still doing the same job and hours as just an employee, you might be an employee that has been wronged by your company. Research and get more detailed information at www.fairlabor-legal.com. You have rights and the privilege to get the pay you deserve.

SOURCE: Fair Labor Standards Act › Timberlake employee among growing number of FLSA abuses

Because of the diverse nature of the American workforce, there is special consideration given to various groups such as children working on farms. Selected terms were given for people in executive and administrative positions as well as thousands of other special cases who are able to claim exemptions to FLSA regulations.

In August 2004 the most important change to FLSA came about. Lawmakers decided to amend the document and clearly establish which jobs are exempt from overtime and which jobs are not. As a result, millions of Americans who were once eligible for overtime pay had now been ‘reclassified’ into administrative, professional and executive categories which disqualified them for their overtime pay.

Hard working Americans deserve respect for their contributions to society and should be entitled to fair and just compensation for their labors. If you or a loved one has been a victim of oversight, negligence or deceit in the workplace it is important that you contact an experienced FLSA lawyer immediately. FLSA litigation can be confusing and time consuming, and only a professional FLSA attorney will be able to get you the compensation you deserve.

SOURCE: Fair Labor Standards Act › FLSA lawyers-fair labor standards attorney and lawsuits

Brown is an agent for LiveOps, a company based in Palo Alto, Calif., with a national network of 16,000 operators who work from home answering the phone for TV infomercials.

Brown, who lives in Houston, works in her pajamas and never knows what she’ll be selling until the script pops up on her computer screen.

“You have to learn to be relaxed,” Brown said.

LiveOps is on a hiring spree, ramping up to handle all the calls for exercise machines and diet plans from viewers trying to live up to their New Year’s resolutions.

LiveOps would like to add 200 agents to the 180 who are already working in Houston, said Tim Whipple, vice president of the virtual call center, whose clients include the sellers of Ronco knives and rotisserie ovens, Hip Hop Abs fitness program, WalkFit shoe inserts and the Whitney Education Group’s program on foreclosure investing.

LiveOps also handles the calls for 1-800-Flowers.com and Pizza Hut, he said.

The work-at-home model works well for the company, which must staff up when its customers are in the buying mood — and that often occurs in the middle of the night.

The sophisticated shift-scheduling program it uses can also handle huge short-term spikes such as pizza orders during the Super Bowl, Whipple said.

It’s also an attractive model for the many stay-at-home moms — and some dads — who want to pocket extra cash.

“It’s been the best thing that ever happened,” said Brown, who has a degree in marketing.

She has four children, ages 2, 3, 7 and 10, and wanted a way to supplement her husband’s salary as a middle school teacher.

Day care is expensive, Brown said, so she wanted a job that she could do when her children sleep and her husband is at home. A friend told her about LiveOps.

As a telephone agent, Brown picks her own schedule once a week. She often signs on at 9 p.m. and works for several hours. And there’s no commute.

Brown said she earns between $12 and $14 an hour and that she works about 20 hours a week. She has to provide — at her expense — a dedicated phone line, phone, a computer and high-speed Internet access.

She only earns money when she’s on the phone, which Whipple said is roughly 25 cents a minute plus any commissions.

The number of calls routed to Brown and other agents depend on their selling skills and ability to sell up — selling extra items callers agree to buy after listening to the agent’s sales pitch — as well as their speed. The better you do, the more calls you get.

When there is a lull between the calls, Brown said she watches movies or pays bills.

Not for everyone

However, the job may not be for everyone. That’s because agents aren’t paid for the time they spend waiting for calls and training, including watching the infomercials.

LifeOps treats its agents as independent contractors rather than employees, Whipple said, which means they don’t receive overtime pay when they work more than 40 hours a week. While agents can earn as much as $20 an hour, the average is more like $8 to $12 an hour, he said.

But a recently filed lawsuit by two agents in Georgia contends they don’t even earn the minimum wage when their training time and nonpaid downtime between calls are factored in. The two women argue they’re employees — not independent contractors — and are entitled to minimum wage and overtime pay.

The federal court rules in the Southern District of Georgia discourages attorney comment on pending litigation, said Mark Johnson, a lawyer with Gilbert, Harrell, Sumerford & Martin in Brunswick, Ga., who is representing the two women.

LiveOps spokeswoman Elizabeth Gordon said the company had no comment.

No office policies

Rose Johnson Branch, who is not a part of the lawsuit, estimates that she works 50 hours a week as a LiveOps agent in Houston, fielding infomercial calls as well as pizza orders from all over the country.

Branch said she typically earns between $15 and $20 an hour with LiveOps, depending on bonuses.

“The phone doesn’t stay idle much,” she said, crediting her experience and picking up every call with a smile in her voice. And there’s no office politics.

“In corporations, there are certain politics to play to get promotions,” she said. “The system has no idea you are in your pajamas. It just knows a lot of orders, a lot of up-sales. It’s a very nondiscriminatory system, and I love it.”

SOURCE: They pitch sales in their pajamas, by L.M. Sixel, Houston Chronicle

SOURCE: Fair Labor Standards Act › They pitch sales in their pajamas

The Company plans to continue to defend its position in this case, and, at this time, does not believe an adverse resolution will have a material effect on the Company’s financial statements taken as a whole. The Company presently does not know whether the plaintiffs intend to challenge the ruling.

About Dollar General

Dollar General is a Fortune 500(R) discount retailer with 8,164 neighborhood stores as of July 28, 2006. Dollar General stores offer convenience and value to customers by offering consumable basic items that are frequently used and replenished, such as food, snacks, health and beauty aids and cleaning supplies, as well as a selection of basic apparel, house wares and seasonal items at everyday low prices. The Company store support center is located in Goodlettsville, Tennessee. Dollar General’s Web site can be reached at www.dollargeneral.com.

SOURCE: Court decertifies class in Dollar General wage and hour lawsuit, by Business Wire

SOURCE: Fair Labor Standards Act › Court decertifies class in Dollar General wage and hour lawsuit