California Employment Lawyers Blog

According to a recent New York Times article that Vincent Howard, managing attorney of Howard Law, has been following--an unpaid intern who formerly worked for Harper's Bazaar magazine, filed a lawsuit this week accusing the both the fashion magazine and the Hearst Corporation, Harper's parent company, of violating wage and hour laws by making her work full time hours, without compensation.

As our Costa Mesa employment lawyers blog has recently reported, unpaid internships continue to be a hot topic in federal employment news, as a growing number of young people who do unpaid internships for experience and future employment, are often taken advantage of by employers who break wage and hour laws. Many unpaid interns and labor advocates claim that employers exploit internships by classifying the workers as interns, but then force them to perform the jobs of regular workers, in order to avoid paying proper wages--causing the interns to miss out on the educational experience that should be the focus of experience.

In the wage and hour lawsuit, Xuedan Wang, a 2010 college graduate, interned at the magazine from August 2011 until December 2011, working around 40 hours a week, but often up to 55 hours. Wang claims that although her degree was in strategic communications, she was given the assignment to coordinate the retrieving and delivering of samples between the fashion magazine, showrooms and vendors, and gave other unpaid interns the responsibility of helping to facilitate the drop-offs and pickups. Wang claims to have also helped maintain the sample records and process requests for corporate expense report reimbursements.

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has been focusing on unpaid internships over the past few years, and investigating employers who take advantage of interns--many of whom have a difficult time finding paid jobs. According to the DOL, there are not many options for a for-profit employer to offer an unpaid internship--and employers must comply with the six federal legal criteria in order to achieve an unpaid internship status.

Continue reading "Former Unpaid Intern Files Wage and Hour Lawsuit Against Harper's Bazaar and Hearst" »

Vincent Howard frequently discusses the topic of wage and hour violations in the hospitality industry in our Riverside employment lawyers blog--a workplace epidemic where employers in low wage industries, such as the hospitality industry, often violate the rights of vulnerable employees.

In recent news that Mr. Howard has been following, a group of fourteen Indianapolis hotel workers have filed a class action wage and hour lawsuit against ten hotel staffing agencies--claiming that they were purposely robbed of their right to fair compensation.

The workers are reportedly primarily Hispanic immigrants, who were employed by Hospitality Staffing Solutions (HSS), a work agency providing temporary and low-wage workers to hotels like Marriott, Western, Embassy Suites, and other hotels across the country. Many of the workers were employed as housekeepers, bussers, and dishwashers, and claim in the lawsuit that they were forced to work off the clock hours, and forced to work through their unpaid rest and meal breaks--which often times pushed their earnings to well below the federal minimum wage, $7.25.

The outsourcing of work by the staffing companies has reportedly led to a two-tier class system within the hotels, as low-wage and lesser paid workers from HSS suffer, while working next to direct hotel hires, who are better compensated for the same work. Many HSS employees claim that compensation did not properly reflect the hours that they actually worked--and if they did not complete their work in the scheduled time, they would be threatened with job termination.

Continue reading "Hotel Workers File Lawsuit Against Hotel Staffing Company for Wage and Hour Violations" »

According to recent employee misclassification news that our Anaheim, California labor and employment lawyers have been following, a unit of Novartis AG, the Swiss pharmaceutical company, received preliminary approval from a New York U.S. District Judge this week, for a $99 million settlement--to resolve the wage and hour lawsuit brought by 7,700 sales former and current sales representatives who claimed they experienced employee misclassification and were denied overtime payment.

The settlement follows a July 2010 ruling by New York's 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, that Vincent Howard discussed in a related Costa Mesa employment lawyers blog. The ruling decided that the sales representatives, who meet with physicians to encourage them to prescribe the drug company's medicine, were qualified for overtime under the U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), and should not be classified as "exempt" from state and federal overtime laws.

In April, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on a similar case involving employee misclassification, with a GlaxoSmithKline lawsuit--where the nation's highest court will rule on whether the outside sales employees are subject to exemptions under state and federal labor law, or if they are promoters or marketers who should receive overtime payment.

As Vincent Howard has reported in a previous Carson, California employment lawyer blog, under California law and the FLSA, most non-exempt employees are entitled to overtime compensation, which by law equals time and one half their normal rate of payment for every hour worked beyond forty in a workweek.

Continue reading "Novartis To Pay $99M in Employment Misclassification Lawsuit Settlement" »

Last year, Vincent Howard discussed a Riverside class action wage and hour lawsuit in our Costa Mesa employment lawyers blog, that was filed by a group of workers at a Riverside, California warehouse who claim that there are forced to work under brutal conditions, required to perform in dangerous working environments, and regularly experience wage theft.

The Riverside wage and hour lawsuit was filed after California State Labor Commissioner Julie A. Su launched investigations into the staffing firm operations at the warehouse facility, that handles goods for nationwide Wal-Mart retail stores. The Riverside warehouse is one of a wide network of Inland Empire-area warehouses in California, that receive goods headed for retail stores across the country, and the state investigation uncovered staggering labor law violations that resulted in $1 million in fines by Commissioner Su.

After the investigation, the three staffing agencies, as well as Schneider, the company responsible for running the Wal-Mart distribution center, were sued in the class action lawsuit by six workers--who claim they are purposefully underpaid due to outsourcing and subcontractor layering, they are pressured to perform in dangerous working conditions, and are consistently denied minimum wage and overtime compensation. The workers claim in the suit that when they confronted their employers about the treatment, they reportedly received threats of retaliation, actual retaliation and job termination.

Last week, according to the Huffington Post, the workers staffed by the Rogers-Premier Unloading Services company have been notified both in writing and orally that their jobs will come to a close by February 24th, when the contract between Schneider and Rogers-Premier ends--as the staffing company has decided to no longer provide workers in the Riverside County warehouse, as well as the Illinois and Georgia locations as well.

Continue reading "Riverside CA Warehouse Workers Fear Job Loss after Initiating State Investigation and Filing Wage and Hour Lawsuit" »

Last month, a federal judge approved a $915,000 class action California wage and hour settlement, filed by a group of 82 migratory Fresno County farmworkers who claimed they experienced violations of California State law and the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), after their employer failed to may them proper minimum wage for their farm work.

According to the lawsuit, that attorney Vincent Howard has been following, thirty-one workers originally claimed that H&R Gunland Ranches paid them wages based on a piece rate basis for their work pruning and tying grape vines--regardless of the number of actual hours worked. The farmworkers, who were represented by the California Rural Legal Assistance, (CRLA) accused the farm of paying them less than $2 per hour, in the 2009-filed lawsuit.

As Howard Law's labor and employment attorney Vincent Howard has reported in a related Riverside wage and hour blog, under the FLSA all employees covered by the act must receive at least $7.25 per hour, the national minimum wage, for hours worked in a forty-hour week. If employees work over forty hours in a week of work, they must according to federal law receive overtime compensation, which totals one and one-half times their routine rates of payment, and includes incentive pay, any bonuses, and commissions.

The wage and hour lawsuit was reportedly granted class action status, after the workers alleged that they were forced to work beyond 10 hours per day and 60 hours per week, yet did not receive minimum wage, as required by federal law. An additional 51 workers joined the lawsuit, which brought the total to 82 members who will be eligible to receive the settlement.

Continue reading "Farmworkers to Receive Nearly $1M in CA Wage and Hour Lawsuit Settlement " »

In a recent Costa Mesa, California employment lawyers blog, Vincent Howard discussed a California class action wage and hour lawsuit in which 6,700 Polo Ralph Lauren employees were awarded $4 million, after the employees accused the high-end retailer of forcing employees to endure off the clock bag checks without compensating them for their time, and denying them rest and meal breaks--violations of California labor law.

In related Los Angeles, California wage and hour news, popular Los Angeles-based retail store Forever 21 is being sued in a similar class action wage and hour lawsuit, by employees who allege that the company forced them to work off the clock hours, and skip rest and meal breaks.

The class action lawsuit, filed by five former and current employees, accuses the clothing maker of forcing them to frequently work through meal breaks, and work off the clock hours--violations of California labor law and the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The workers claim in the wage and hour lawsuit that they were often made to work during lunch breaks, and were kept after the end of their work shifts after they had already clocked out, in order to search their bags for stolen retail items--amounting to off the clock work that they were not paid for.

According to the Huffington Post, bag checks for workers are a part of the loss prevention policy for Forever 21 retail stores across California. The employees' attorney, who also reportedly helped bring the class action case against Polo Ralph Lauren, stated that this case is expected to be even larger--as the practice of off the clock bag checks appears to be widespread.

Continue reading "California Workers Sue Forever 21 in Class Action Wage and Hour Lawsuit" »

In our previous Irvine employment lawyers blog, Howard Law attorney Vincent Howard discussed important California and federal labor and employment law cases from 2011.

In this Costa Mesa employment blog issue, Mr. Howard will continue in his labor and employment discussion, highlighting other key 2011 developments, including the EEOC's largest disability discrimination settlement with Verizon, the topic of suitable seating in the workplace, and the U.S. Department of Labor's (DOL) continuing crusade to curb wage and hour violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), among other high-profile cases from last year.

Verizon Pays Record $20M in EEOC's Largest Disability Discrimination Settlement
Last year, in the largest disability discrimination settlement in a single lawsuit in the EEOC's history, Verizon, the telecommunications giant, agreed to pay $20 million to resolve the EEOC's nationwide class disability discrimination lawsuit. Verizon Communications was accused in the lawsuit of violating the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) by refusing to accommodate disabled employees and make exceptions to the company's "no fault" attendance plans--which reprimands employees if they accumulate a certain amount of "chargeable absences." The EEOC accused Verizon of denying reasonable accommodations to hundreds of disabled employees by either disciplining them or firing them when they needed more time off than Verizon's leave policy allowed--especially when the "chargeable absences" were caused by disabilities.

Wage and Hour Violations Hit All Time Highs
In 2011 the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) continued on its crusade to reduce workplace labor violations and wage and hour issues. According to the DOL, overtime payment is the largest wage and hour violation issue in the country, with thousands of complaints reported every year. In 2010, nearly 6,800 wage and hour lawsuits were filed, totaling about 700 more than the previous year, and the DOL forced employers to pay an estimated $176 million in back wages to employees. In the past five years, employers have also paid nearly $925 million in back pay and overtime wages to 1.2 million workers.

Continue reading "2011 Labor and Employment Law in Review: EEOC's Verizon Settlement, Suitable Seating, Employee Misclassification" »

In this month's Costa Mesa, California employment lawyers newsletter, Howard Law attorney Vincent Howard reviewed key California and federal labor and employment law developments from 2011--hot topics that our Riverside, California employment lawyers blog covered over the course last year, including GINA's final regulations, the Supreme Court's ruling in the Walmart v. Dukes sex-discrimination lawsuit, and Charlie Sheen's wrongful termination lawsuit against Warner Brothers and Chuck Lorre, among others.

GINA's Final Regulations Take Effect
After the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) voted unanimously in late 2010, the final regulations that implement the employment provisions of GINA (Title II), the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008, took effect in early 2011. Title II of GINA represents the first extension of the EEOC's jurisdiction since the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), and makes it illegal for employers to engage in genetic testing or discriminate against employees based on genetic make-up.

Third Party Retaliation Limits Case Decided by Supreme Court
In January of last year, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Thompson v. North American Stainless, a retaliation ban limits case, stating that under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a company can be sued for retaliation by terminating an employee's fiancée. The case arose after a former female engineer with North American Stainless, who was engaged to a metallurgic engineer at the company--claimed to have experienced gender-based discrimination and filed a complaint with the EEOC. The female engineer's fiancée was fired three weeks after her EEOC sex-discrimination complaint was revealed, whereupon the fiancée filed his own third-party retaliation claim. As Vincent Howard reported in our California employment attorney blog, the highest court decided that third-party victims of retaliation are covered by federal protections.

Charlie Sheen Sues for Millions
One of the highest-profile employment lawsuits from 2011 that garnered massive media attention was filed by Hollywood actor Charlie Sheen in March, who sued Warner Brothers Studio and Chuck Lorre, the executive producer of Two and a Half Men, in a $100 million dollars lawsuit--for wrongful termination, breach of contract, retaliation and other Los Angeles, California labor and employment charges. Sheen's contract was reportedly terminated for health issues that allegedly led to his inability to perform his duties for the television show, for public tirades against Lorre, and for alleged substance abuse and destructive behavior. Sheen and Warner Brothers reportedly finalized a multi-million dollar settlement in September.

Continue reading "2011 Labor and Employment Law in Review: GINA, Charlie Sheen, Walmart v. Dukes" »

In recent employment misclassification news that our Costa Mesa wage and hour attorney Vincent Howard has been following, last month, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) filed a lawsuit against Healthy Solutions Home Health Services LLC, based in Columbus, Ohio--seeking over $84,000 in liquidated damages and back wages for ten workers, after a DOL investigation found the employer responsible for employee misclassification.

According the DOL, the lawsuit was filed after an investigation uncovered that the employer had misclassified employees as independent contractors--violating the Fair Labor Standard Act's (FLSA) minimum wage and overtime payment provisions.

As our Carson, California employment lawyers blog has often discussed, employment misclassification is a growing workplace trend, particularly in low wage industries like the health care industry, that often preys on vulnerable workers who aren't aware of their rights. Employee misclassification poses a serious threat to employees, by denying them access to important employment benefits and protections, like minimum wage and overtime payments, meal periods and rest breaks, workers' compensation, family and medical leave, and other critical benefits. Employee misclassification also causes a great threat to honest, law-abiding employers who have a difficult time competing against those businesses who are breaking the law.

As Vincent Howard has also discussed in related Anaheim wage and hour blogs, under the FLSA, employers are required to pay employees covered under the act at least the federal minimum wage, which is currently $7.25 per hour, for every hour worked--with overtime payment of one and one-half their normal hourly pay rates for any hours worked over forty in a work week. The FLSA also requires that employers keep accurate time and payroll records, and prohibit any form of retaliation against employees who stand up for their rights under the FLSA.

Continue reading "DOL Sues Healthy Solutions Home Health Services for Employee Misclassification" »

California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris announced this month that her office has secured a California wage and hour settlement of $1 million from eight Southern and Northern California car washes--who were found to have violated California Labor Code by engaging in a wide variety of wage and hour and record keeping violations, along with worker exploitation.

The civil lawsuit was filed in October 2010, as Vincent Howard discussed in a related Newport Beach employment attorney blog, after investigators found that the car washes consistently denied workers minimum wage and overtime compensation, failed to compensate workers who quit or whose employment was terminated, and denied the workers their legal right to rest and meal breaks.

The lawsuit was filed against eight car washes, located in Santa Monica, Venice, Irvine, Folsom, Fair Oaks, Laguna Niguel, San Ramon, and Laguna Hills, California, along with Dipu Haque Sikder, the man responsible for starting the business.

According to the wage and hour lawsuit, the car washes required employees to report for work several hours early for their shifts, and to be available for work without pay, until the business would pick up. When workers received compensation, many received checks that could not be cashed, because the company lacked the proper funds. The car washes also reportedly operated for many years without proper state licenses required from the Labor Commissioner.

Continue reading "CA Attorney General Harris Announces $1M Wage and Hour Settlement with Car Washes" »

In recent employee misclassification news that Howard Law attorney Vincent Howard has been watching, a national collection action lawsuit has been conditionally certified this week by a New York federal court--after thousands of entry-level audit employees accused KPMG LLP of violating federal labor laws by engaging in employee misclassification, and failed to compensate them for overtime hours.

According to the lawsuit, KPMG, the U.S. audit, tax and advisory services firm, allegedly misclassified the firm's nationwide audit associates as "exempt" and did not properly compensate them according to the overtime provisions of the Federal Labor Standards Act (FSLA) as well as New York Labor Law.

The audit associates reportedly worked beyond forty hours per week and received no overtime compensation--a violation of the FLSA, which mandates that covered employees receive a minimum wage of at least $7.25 per hour for all hours in a forty-hour workweek, with overtime compensation of one and one-half their standard rate for any time worked beyond forty hours.

KPMG reportedly claims that these audit associates rightly receive professional or administrator exemption classifications, or "white collar" exemptions, as our Anaheim employment attorney blog has previously discussed, and are exempt from the FLSA's overtime payment and minimum wage provisions.

Continue reading "Audit Associates Gain Certification for Conditional Collective Action--in Employee Misclassification Lawsuit" »

Lady Gaga, the wildly flamboyant popstar, was sued recently by former personal assistant Jennifer O'Neill, in a wage and hour lawsuit that accused the singer of violating wage and hour laws by forcing her to work without proper overtime payment.

According to the wage and hour lawsuit that our Orange County labor and employment attorney Vincent Howard has been following, the former employee claims that as Gaga's personal assistant for thirteen months during her 2010 Monster Ball world tour, Lady Gaga owes her hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid overtime.

O'Neill's was reportedly paid $75,000 per year for as Gaga's personal assistant, and was responsible for ensuring that Lady Gaga was always on schedule, and for catering to the popstar's every need at all times of the day and night--in her home base New York duplex, and during her travels to cities throughout the country, and during her global concert tours, including assisting the popstar on tour buses, trains, yachts, hotel suites, stadiums, private jets, and on ferries.

O'Neill was also reportedly expected to manage personal details like Gaga's finances, food intake, and ensuring that Lady Gaga always promptly received towels following showers. O'Neill was also responsible for ensuring the availability of her specifically chosen and often outlandish outfits.

Continue reading "Lady Gaga Sued by Former Personal Assistant for Nearly $400K in Wage and Hour Lawsuit" »

In a recent Carson employment attorney blog, managing partner Vincent Howard discussed the Obama administration's resent proposal to change the 37-year old minimum wage and overtime exemption from the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) for nearly two million home care workers who care for elderly and disabled people across the country.

For years these workers have been considered as companions to the elderly, in the same category as babysitters, and the Obama administration and the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) calls for these workers to be considered home care aides, and protected under the FLSA--to ensure that they are paid fairly for their important care giving services.

According to the DOL's posted announcement, this change will revise the companionship and FLSA's live-in home worker regulations, in order to more accurately define the responsibilities that an exempt companion performs, and in order to restrict the exemption to exempt companions who work only for the household or families using the companion's services. The DOL also proposed that third party employers, like home care agencies who staff workers, cannot claim the exemption for companionship or the overtime pay exemption for live-in home workers, even if the employee is employed both by the family and the third party.

As Howard Law's employment attorney Vincent Howard previously stated, when the FLSA protections were expanded in 1974 to include domestic service workers, these Amendments created a restricted exemption for both overtime pay and minimum wage requirements of the Act for companions and babysitters for the infirm and elderly, and created an exemption from the overtime requirement only for live-in home workers.

Continue reading "DOL Proposes Revisions to FLSA's Wage and Hour Laws for Home Care Workers" »

In wage and hour news from last week that our Vincent Howard, our Riverside labor and employment attorney has been following, President Obama and the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) announced a plan to provide minimum wage and overtime law protections to health care workers --a decision that would increase the standard of living for around two million of these domestic employees, but could also increase the costs for the disabled and elderly.

Home health care workers have reportedly been exempt from federal wage and hour laws since 1974, when the workers were considered only as elderly companions, and placed in the same employment category as local baby sitters. But as the amount of full-time home health care workers rapidly climbed, so did the number of seniors who needed help accomplishing an array of daily functions, from bathing to dressing, and taking the correct medication, among other tasks.

President Barack Obama stated recently that it is unacceptable that health care employees are paid less and considered to be in the same category as teenage baby sitters. Obama stated that home heath care workers deserve to be paid fairly, and provide an important service that many elderly people in this country couldn't live without.

According to the Washington Post, the size of the U.S. population over the age of 65 is expected to nearly double in the next twenty years, which will lead to millions of people relying on long-term health care from these domestic workers, who currently receive no federal wage and hour protection in the workplace.

Continue reading " Obama and DOL Seek to Extend Federal Wage and Hour Laws to Home Health Care Workers" »

Howard Law's managing partner Vincent Howard recently discussed the topic of understanding employee rights during the holidays in regard to holiday pay--an important topic that often surfaces for many Howard Law clients during the holiday season, as many people assume that their employer is obligated to pay them extra pay or even double time for their holiday work hours. Some employees are upset when their employer makes them work during the holidays and wonder if the practice is even legal in California.

According to the California Department of Industrial Relations, hours worked during holidays, as well as Saturdays and Sundays, are treated like any other days of the week. Under California labor and employment law, employers are not required to either provide employees with paid holidays, close its business operations on any holidays, or provide employees with days off for any particular holidays.

Our labor and employment attorney Vincent Howard states that if an employer chooses to close its business on holidays and makes the decision to give employees time off from their jobs with compensation, such employment circumstances exist according to a policy or employment practice put into place by the employer, according to the terms of a collective bargaining agreement, or according to the terms of an employment agreement between the employee and the employer, as there is nothing in California law that mandates such a practice of employment.

There is also nothing in the law that requires an employer to compensate an employee with special premium compensation for work performed on a holiday or over a weekend, beyond the regular overtime compensation required for all work performed beyond eight hours in a workday, or forty hours in a week of work. Our Orange County, California labor and employment attorneys advise our clients to always review their company policy when it comes to holiday pay, so there are no surprises when it comes to working during the holiday season.

Continue reading "Understanding An Employee's Right to Holiday Pay" »