Wage and Hour Defense Blog

President Obama announced in his State of the Union address that he will issue an executive order increasing the minimum wage for employees of federal contractors to $10.10 per hour. Most of those employees, however, are already paid in excess of this amount under statutes such as the Service Contract Act and the Davis-Bacon Act.

On January 27, 2014, the United States Supreme Court resolved a long-standing and hotly-contested issue of importance to unions, when it held that time spent donning and doffing required protective gear was not compensable under the Fair Labor Standards Act and the terms of a collective bargaining agreement. Sandifer v. United States Steel Corp., No. 12-417.

In California, employers typically must pay "daily overtime" to non-exempt employees at a rate of one and one-half times their regular rates of pay when they work more than eight hours in a day. In a new decision, the California Court of Appeal has just confirmed an important exemption to "daily overtime" for employees covered by collective bargaining agreements.

On January 15, 2014, the Mayor of the District of Columbia signed a bill increasing the D.C. minimum wage to $11.50, in three steps by July 1, 2016. This caps off a recent coordinated effort in D.C. and suburban Maryland's Montgomery and Prince George's counties to increase the regional minimum wage to $11.50.

In Ward v. Costco Wholesale Corp., No. 11-56757 (9th Cir. Jan. 9, 2014), the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that, under certain limited circumstances, deducting a debt from an employee's final paycheck does not run afoul of federal law or the California Labor Code. However, employers should remain very cautious about making such deductions.

By David Jacobs and Amy B. Messigian

We would like to call your attention to a significant change to the whistleblower statute in California that went into effect on January 1. The statute, Cal. Lab. Code section 1102.5, has been substantially expanded beyond its prior form to now protect employees from retaliation for making internal complaints or even potential complaints about suspected violations of federal, state or local law.

California previously protected employees from retaliation for reporting reasonably suspected violations of state or federal laws to a ...

The Ninth Circuit has asked the California Supreme Court to clarify California's "suitable seating" law requiring certain employers to "provide" "suitable seating" to some employees where "the nature of the work reasonably permits the use of seats." The Ninth Circuit has asked whether the term "nature of the work" refers to individual tasks or a full range of duties, whether an employer's business judgment should be considered in determining if the nature of the work "reasonably permits" the use of a seat, and whether the employee must prove what would constitute a "suitable seat" to prevail.

Training Paid FLSA

"Wage Hour" "Affordable Care Act" "Minimum Wage"

By Alka N. Ramchandani & Michael D. Thompson

In recent years, Cal-OSHA has taken an aggressive stance against exposing employees to potential heat illness, often citing employers and proposing significant penalties for failing to provide to employees who work in high heat conditions with adequate drinking water, shade, training, and/or cool-down periods. Furthermore, as noted by the California Supreme Court in Brinker v. Superior Court, monetary remedies for the denial of meal and rest breaks “engendered a wave of wage and hour class action litigation” when added to the ...