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Hiring part-time employees can be a great way for businesses to fill in the gaps in their employee schedule while saving money. It can also be beneficial for employees looking for flexible hours. On the other hand, part-time employees are often left without the benefits of full-time employees, including health insurance and vacation time. Labor law generally requires an employee to work at least 20 hours per week before she is entitled to access to her employer’s health insurance or paid vacation time.

Even if an employee is taken on to work full time, the picture is not always rosy. Employees who are paid at least a salary of $23,600 per year and meet certain qualifications can legally be exempted from overtime compensation, even if they work more than forty hours a week.

Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), employees can be exempt from overtime if they fit into one of three categories: administrative, executive, and professional. For the administrative category, an employee must perform primarily office work and provide administrative assistance directly to an executive. The executive category includes managers and all employees who spend more than half their time supervising other employees. The professional category is made up of workers whose jobs require a specific set of skills or level of education, including doctors, lawyers, and performers. Continue reading ›

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Many workers have become accustomed to the standard 9-to-5 schedule, in which they work eight hours a day, five days a week. In some parts of the country, that has shifted to ten hours a day, four days out of the week. This gives employees a three-day weekend every week and some studies have shown this schedule actually boosts productivity.

The potential problem this new schedule poses has to do with overtime compensation. Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), employees are entitled to one and one-half times their normal hourly wages for all time spent working after eight hours a day or forty hours a week. The Act does take into account the potential for the four-day workweek, but it has specific requirements for when employees can work ten-hour days without getting paid the proper overtime rate. Continue reading ›

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Large retail stores, such as Target and Walgreens, have faced a number of public lawsuits from their employees. One of the most recent lawsuits alleges Target misclassified some of its employees as exempt from overtime, and as a result, failed to pay those employees the proper overtime compensation when they worked more than forty hours a week. Target denies these claims and asserts it complied with the law.

Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), employers are required to pay all their workers no less than $7.25 per hour. For all time spent working after eight hours a day or forty hours a week, employers are required to pay the proper overtime rate of one and one-half times the employee’s normal hourly wage. The FLSA does list some exceptions to this rule, but it is very specific about the types of employees that can qualify for exempt status.

The FLSA describes three main types of employees that are not entitled to overtime. An employee who is paid a salary of at least $23,600 and works in either an administrative, executive, or professional capacity is not entitled to overtime compensation. However, rather than simply classifying employees as fitting into one of these categories, the FLSA has specific requirements for each category. Continue reading ›

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Buying a used car is always a risky business. You can never really know what the car went through in the hands of previous owners. In order to put customers’ minds at ease, car dealerships started offering “certified pre-owned” vehicles. The “certified” label is supposed to ward off consumers’ suspicion by providing a guarantee that the vehicle had to pass an inspection before going up for sale again. In exchange for this peace of mind, certified pre-owned vehicles are usually sold for a much higher price than a standard used car. But what exactly does this inspection consist of?

It turns out there are currently no legal requirements for selling a certified pre-owned vehicle. Instead, each manufacturer and car dealer has its own requirements, which can range from a 32-point inspection to a 300-point inspection. Continue reading ›

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Defendants in class action lawsuits sometimes try to avoid class certification by claiming it would be too difficult to identify and find all the potential class members. But just because something is hard doesn’t mean it’s impossible or not worth doing.

GE Capital Retail Bank is the latest corporation to use this excuse in an attempt to avoid a class action lawsuit. The bank is accused of violating the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) by allegedly using an autodialer to send prerecorded debt collection messages to cellphone users who weren’t even customers of the bank. Continue reading ›

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Trade Secrets come in all shapes and sizes. They can be as complicated as the recipe for a favorite soft drink or can be as straight forward as a list of clients for a particular company. Whatever the trade secret, they are crucial, essential and sensitive pieces of information many company is willing to litigate over to protect. Companies go out of their way to protect such assets when they hire new employees. There are many ways to protect trade secrets. Non-compete, non-solicitation and/or non-disclose clauses within an employee agreement are just a few ways protection can be sought.

In Triumph Packing Group v. Ward, 834 F. Supp. 2d 796 (N.D. Ill. 2011), Triumph, a privately-owned manufacturer of packing supplier to large supplies of consumer goods, brought a suit against Mr. Ward, Chief Operating Officer of Triumph, who was fired in 2011. Upon employment with Triumph, Ward signed an employment agreement which included a non-compete clauses as well as a non-solicitation clause. After time spent at Triumph, it was discovered that Ward had been allegedly diverting resources from his employer to allegedly engage in business with a former customer of Triumph, as well as to allegedly fund new business endeavors with AGI, a global packing company who hired Ward as their Vice President. Through his employment with Triumph, Mr. Ward was able to allegedly obtain Triumph’s customer and pricing information. Triumph argued that Mr. Ward had obtained “lean manufacturing and efficient operations” which Triumph deduced to be trade secrets. Triumph argued that Mr. Ward would inevitably misappropriate Triumph’s trade secrets with his new businesses endeavors. Ward denied all of the claims. Continue reading ›

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Every state is different. In addition to the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which protects employees working throughout the country, each state has their own labor laws that cover employees working within the state. Employers conducting business in the United States need to be sure to abide by both state and federal labor laws. It can be confusing, but employers who allegedly fail to do so can find themselves facing a lawsuit, such as the one SoHo House West Hollywood LLC recently settled.

According to the wage and hour class action lawsuit, the Los Angeles location of the chain of luxury clubs allegedly failed to properly compensate its employees for overtime and missed breaks. Under the FLSA, all hourly non-exempt employees are entitled to one and one-half times their normal hourly rate for all overtime worked. The FLSA defines overtime as any time spent working after eight hours a day or forty hours a week.

Continue reading ›

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Because our reputations are so valuable, any accusation of wrongdoing can cause serious damage to a person’s career and social life. As a result, accusations should be handled delicately and this is especially true when it comes to rape.

When a college student is raped by a professor or fellow student, the college or university the student attends is required to react in accordance with the U.S. Department of Education’s Title IX. This ensures that both parties will be dealt with fairly, and that the identity of the accuser will be protected.

According to a recent lawsuit, Florida State University (FSU) failed to comply with Title IX when a student accused Jameis Winston, the quarterback of the University’s football team, of raping her. Winston is now reportedly leaving for the NFL.

The morning after the alleged rape, the accuser went to a local hospital where she was examined by authorities who obtained evidence for a rape kit. After that, the case was turned over to the Tallahassee Police Department (TPD). Continue reading ›

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