Employers seeking to diversify their workforces need to remember that Title VII’s prohibition on class-based discrimination still applies — even if your motives are pure. The EEOC announced that it settled a lawsuit in which it alleged that a company was discriminating in favor of Hispanic job applicants over black, white, and Asian applicants.
With the new Biden administration now in place, the Department of Labor (DOL) has withdrawn a Trump era measure on guidance documents. Following a recent Executive Order, the DOL issued a final rule on January 27 to rescind the Trump DOL’s prior rule. The result will likely be less public involvement in DOL guidance.
There have been many examples of the tension between the “gig economy” and traditional labor laws. Most of the companies like Uber or Grubhub choose to classify their drivers as independent contractors instead of employees, which eliminates obligations like overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The Seventh Circuit this week dealt with such a
A February 2020 jury verdict against county music star Martina McBride’s production company highlights – albeit indirectly – the perils of unpaid internship programs and the issues they can cause under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
Martina McBride and her husband, John, own Blackbird Studios, which hired Richard Hanson as its operations
Companies that work with the federal government (think government contracts, grant funding, and Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements) need to stay up to date on the federal False Claims Act (FCA). Employee whistleblowers continue to use the FCA as one of their prime tools to bring actions against their employers. In 2019, whistleblowers filed 636 new
Ever wonder what happened with the minimum wage fight that has been going on between Alabama and Birmingham? Well, here is the latest — the full panel on the Eleventh Circuit has now spoken: the district court rightly dismissed the lawsuit against Alabama’s governor and attorney general alleging discrimination in the state’s minimum wage law.
We’ve posted on this topic several times before but the battle between independent contractors and employees continues.
Here’s a brief refresher on the basics of why proper classification of employees as independent contractors or employees matters:
Minimum wage laws invite controversy, and Alabama’s latest tug-of-war between the state and its largest city is going to get another wider review. You may recall that back in 2015, Birmingham, Alabama, passed a local minimum wage law. On the heels of that move, the Alabama Legislature then passed a state-wide minimum wage law,
The U.S. federal government shutdown has continued for more than a month, with no probable end in sight. While many government employees are furloughed, an estimated 420,000 others are deemed “essential employees” and are required to continue working without pay during the shutdown. Several essential employees have recently filed putative collective action lawsuits, claiming
In case you didn’t know, Oregon enacted the “Fair Work Week” law, making it the first state to legally restrict the scheduling practices of employers in the service sector. The highlights include: