Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.

A Nashville car wash company has reached a settlement with three employees who claim they weren’t paid for several hours of work. The minimum-wage employees sued Shur-Brite Hi Speed Car Wash, alleging the company’s owners clocked them in and out throughout the day, depending on how busy their work shifts were. The agreed settlement for $130,000 will be distributed among 120 employees, who, like the plaintiffs, weren’t being paid for hours spent on the job.

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Build-A-Bear-Workshop Inc. is listed on Fortune’s 2009 list of the “100 Best Companies to Work for,” but the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division disagrees — at least where the company’s youngest employees are concerned. The government agency cited the St. Louis-based company for violations of child labor provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act and ordered it to pay $25,600 in civil penalties.

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The Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, under which the Fair Labor Standards Act came into existence in 1938 as part of a nationwide effort to protect working class citizens from corporate exploitation and abuse, may be on the mend after an long era of being little more than a bureaucratic entity.

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Talk 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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A bill introduced to the U.S. Senate on Sept. 12, 2007, by Sen. Barack Obama, S.2044, commonly called the Independent Contractor Proper Classification Act of 2007, would amend the Revenue Act of 1978. Goals of the bill are to require employers to treat workers misclassified as independent contractors as employees.

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The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) was created by the United States government in 1938. This act was set to protect the rights of workers and encourage ‘fair play’ between the management and labor. This act established a national minimum wage, created overtime pay and installed regulations for minors in the workplace.

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