Wage and Hour Defense Blog

More than 7 months after hearing oral argument on an issue that will affect countless employers across the country – whether employers may implement arbitration agreements with class action waivers -- the United States Supreme Court has issued what is bound to be considered a landmark decision in Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis (a companion case to National Labor Relations Board v. Murphy Oil USA and Ernst & Young LLP v. Morris), approving the use of such agreements.

The decision will certainly have a tremendous impact upon pending wage-hour class and collective actions, many of which ...

When California employees bring lawsuits alleging minimum wage, overtime, meal period or rest period violations, they typically bring additional claims that are purportedly “derivative” of these substantive claims.  One of these derivative claims is for wage statement (i.e., paystub) violations, alleging that because the employee was paid not all wages he or she allegedly earned, the wage statements he or she was provided were not accurate.

The maximum penalty for a wage statement violation under the California Labor Code is $4,000 per employee.  With such a significant ...

Our colleagues Jeffrey H. Ruzal, Adriana S. Kosovych, and Judah L. Rosenblatt, attorneys at Epstein Becker Green, co-authored an article in Club Director, titled “Recent Trends in State and Local Wage and Hour Laws.”

Following is an excerpt:

As the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) appears to have relaxed its employee protective policy-making and enforcement efforts that grew during the Obama administration, increasingly states and localities have enacted their own, often more protective, employee-protective laws, rules and regulations. To ensure full wage and hour ...

On May 3, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed an executive order (“Order”) establishing a Task Force on Employee Misclassification (“Task Force”) to address concerns surrounding the misclassification of employees as independent contractors. The Order estimates that misclassification may deprive New Jersey of over $500 million yearly in tax revenue and deprive workers of employment-related benefits and protections to which they are entitled.

The Task Force’s mandate is to provide advice and recommendations to the Governor’s Office and Executive Branch ...