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The Supreme Court makes its biggest headlines when it wades into the biggest issues of the day. But the Supreme Court also maintains a substantial docket of seemingly small—but ultimately important—technical questions.

In recent years, the Court has been particularly interested in defining precisely when an hourly employee is on and off the clock. For example, earlier this term, the Court held in Sandifer v. United States Steel Corp. that employers need not compensate certain workers for time spent donning and doffing safety gear. The Court will answer a related question next term. Yesterday, the Court granted certiorari to…
Continue Reading Supreme Court to Decide Whether Fair Labor Standards Act Requires Compensating Employees for End-of-Shift Security Screenings

In recent years, one of the hottest types of collective actions against employers under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) is what is commonly called a “donning and doffing claim”—a lawsuit for unpaid wages for time employees spent changing clothes for work, such as putting on uniforms, safety gear, and the like. In a recent decision, Sandifer v. United States Steel Corp. (pdf), No. 12-417, the Supreme Court unanimously clarified the rules for these collective actions.

One of the major fights in donning and doffing suits is over the meaning of a key provision of the FLSA that exempts employers from having to compensate employees for off-the-clock “time spent in changing clothes … at the beginning or end of each workday” (29 U.S.C. § 203(o)) if a collective bargaining agreement so provides. Many agreements do exactly that.

Nonetheless, parties have litigated for years over what activities are exempt under Section 203(o). The plaintiffs’ bar typically takes a very narrow view of what constitutes “changing clothes” under the statute. The Court’s decision today takes a far more practical view of the statute. Sandifer makes clear that time spent donning or doffing protective gear that is (1) designed and used to cover the body and (2) commonly regarded as an article of dress—including hard hats, protective jackets, and protective coverings for the arms and legs—is exempt if the employees’ collective bargaining agreement so provides. In addition, minimal time spent putting on or removing other protective gear (such as safety glasses and earplugs) during this time is likewise exempt. Sandifer is therefore likely to reduce the number of circumstances that would allow plaintiffs to succeed in bringing donning-and-doffing lawsuits under the FLSA.

We provide more details about the decision in Sandifer after the jump.Continue Reading Do Employers Have To Pay Unionized Workers For Time Spent Donning and Doffing Safety Gear? Supreme Court Says No.

Some observers of California wage-and-hour class actions contended that the Brinker v. Superior Court—a key decision we have discussed in the past—had sounded the death knell for class certification in those cases. of California wage and hour class actions. Not so fast, according to the California Courts of Appeal, which have, in four published opinions, reversed four separate trial court orders that had denied certification in wage and hour class action cases:

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Continue Reading Recent Appellate Decisions Underscore That Wage and Hour Class Actions are Alive and Well in California Despite Brinker

Former interns used to get revenge against their employers by writing tell-all blog posts and memoirs. Now, they’re lending their names to plaintiffs’ lawyers, who then file wage-and-hour class or collective actions alleging that interns must be paid like hourly employees.

The unpaid internship is among the hottest areas in wage-and-hour litigation. Two of the more noteworthy cases—that so far have come out in opposite ways—are currently pending in the Southern District of New York: Glatt v. Fox Searchlight Pictures and Wang v. Hearst Corporation (pdf).

In Fox Searchlight, former interns from the film Black Swan alleged that they…
Continue Reading The Fate of Hollywood Internship Programs May Rest With the Second Circuit

We frequently help companies address how to manage dispute resolution with their customers and employees—and in particular, how to make use of arbitration as a fair alternative to litigation in court (including class actions).  As a result, we have a great deal of experience with drafting new arbitration agreements and helping companies fine-tune their existing agreements.  We provide some of our insights in  a recent article published in the Spring 2013 issue of the ABA’s Dispute Resolution Magazine called Getting Under the Hood: A Practical Guide to Drafting Consumer and Employee Arbitration Agreements (pdf).  We hope that readers…
Continue Reading How to Draft Fair and Enforceable Consumer and Employee Arbitration Agreements

A quick tip to employers facing class actions brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)—don’t forget about the EEOC’s statutory duty to investigate the claim before filing suit.

Before the EEOC may file a lawsuit, an employee must have made a timely charge of discrimination of which the EEOC timely notified the employer and the EEOC must have investigated the charge, determined that there was reasonable cause to sue, and attempted conciliation with the employer. 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(b), (e).

Courts generally have rejected attempts by employers to call into question the sufficiency of the EEOC’s pre-suit investigation.
Continue Reading Court Allows Employer Discovery Into Whether EEOC Actually Investigated Before Filing Discrimination Suit

Carlton Fields recently published a survey (pdf) of 368 general counsel and other in-house counsel at major companies across more than 25 industries regarding the class actions they faced in 2012 and their expectations for 2013. A number of the findings were quite interesting:

  • In-house counsel reported that their companies spent $2.1 billion on class actions in 2012, a slight decline from 2011. Per-company spending, however, varied widely, with some companies spending $100 million a year and some as little as $180,000. The per-company average was $3.19 million.
  • In 2012, the typical class action cost $671,100 annually, a

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Continue Reading In-House Counsel Predictions of Class Action Trends

We’ve previously written about the D.C. Circuit’s decision in Noel Canning v. NLRB, which held that President Obama’s three recess appointments in 2012 to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) are unconstitutional. The Solicitor General has just filed a petition for certiorari, asking the Supreme Court to review the D.C. Circuit’s decision.

The Obama administration’s decision to seek Supreme Court in Noel Canning is unsurprising. By invalidating the recess appointments to the NLRB, the D.C. Circuit’s decision undermines every action by the NLRB since those appointments were made on January 4, 2012. The decision also casts a dark…
Continue Reading U.S. Seeks Supreme Court Review of Noel Canning v. NLRB in an Effort to Rehabilitate Recess Appointments to NLRB (and CFPB)

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (“FLSA”) permits an employee to file a “collective action” for damages against an employer individually and on behalf of other “similarly situated” employees who later choose to join the lawsuit. 29 U.S.C. § 216(b). In Genesis Healthcare Corp. v. Symczyk, before any other employee had opted to join the suit, the defendant made an offer of judgment to the named plaintiff for the full relief sought by her individual claims. Today, the Supreme Court held—by a 5-4 vote—that the district court had properly dismissed the FLSA collective action for lack of…
Continue Reading Supreme Court Holds that Plaintiff Whose Individual Claims Were Mooted by an Offer of Judgment Lacks Standing to Maintain FLSA Collective Action

Since Concepcion, the plaintiffs’ bar has been exhorting courts to recognize exceptions to its holding that courts may not refuse to enforce an arbitration agreement on the ground that it precludes class actions.  In the employment context, the plaintiffs’ bar thought that it had a winner with Chen-Oster v. Goldman Sachs,  in which a magistrate judge concluded (and a district court agreed) that Title VII bars enforcement of such agreements when the named plaintiff seeks to rely on “pattern-or-practice” evidence of discrimination.  Last week, however, the Second Circuit reversed Chen-Oster and closed the loophole in Parisi v. Goldman, …
Continue Reading Second Circuit Reverses Denial Of Individual Arbitration In Title VII Class Action