Workforce Bulletin

This blog is dedicated to a discussion of many of the different areas of employment law confronted by employers in today’s workplace – and the changes regularly occurring there.

Perhaps more than ever before, change happens rapidly in the workplace.  In part, change has occurred because of changes in technology.  Not long ago, the notion of drafting a social media policy to govern employees’ postings on the Internet was unimaginable.  Now, employers grapple with such policies and their consequences.

Change also comes to the workplace because of changes in administrations.  ...

By:  Douglas Weiner  

In a recently reported case from the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, Applebee’s servers and bartenders alleged they spent a “substantial” amount of time performing non-tipped work, such as cleaning and maintenance, and, therefore, should be paid the minimum wage of $7.25 for the time spent performing non-tipped work, rather than the direct wage of $2.13 the FLSA allows employers to pay employees in tipped occupations See 29 U.S.C. § 203(m) and 29 U.S.C. § 203(t).

Applebee’s argued it properly applied a tip credit to the servers and bartenders’ ...

By: Jay P. Krupin, Kara M. Maciel, Eric J. Conn

As we reported in our blog post in November of 2010, hotel housekeepers across the nation launched a concerted program of filing complaints with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) alleging a range of ergonomic and chemical exposure injuries sustained on the job. Government regulators and legislators are now taking action in response to these complaints. We have attached a series of articles discussing the nature of the complaints and the government’s response to them.

Specifically, the OSHA complaints ...

On March 22, 2011 the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision which is likely to have serious repercussions for companies in the bio/pharma tech space.  In MATRIXX INITIATIVES, INC., ET AL. v. SIRACUSANO ET AL., the Court rejected Matrixx argument that reports regarding the adverse effect of Zicam, its leading revenue generating product, were not statistically significant and therefore not material.

Noting that the analysis of materiality under the securities laws in fact specific, the Court appears to have relied heavily on two factors:

1. The methodologies and requirements ...

By: Allen B. Roberts, Stuart M. Gerson and Daniel J. Schuch

In a case packed with allegations of the kind rarely found beyond the script of a soap opera, the U.S. Department of Labor ("DOL") Administrative Review Board ("ARB") determined that protected activity under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 ("SOX") does not require a showing of fraud against shareholders. Rather, per the ARB, it is sufficient that an employee reasonably believes conventional mail or wire fraud has occurred. The holding in Brown v. Lockheed Martin Corp. (pdf) evidences the ARB's adherence to a literal, and clinical, construction of SOX – and serves as a clear indication of the ARB's willingness to reach beyond the underlying objectives envisioned by Congress in the wake of the infamous collapse of Enron and WorldCom. If upheld and followed, Brown effectively expands SOX whistleblower protections well beyond the intended beneficiary of the law – the "innocent investor."

By:  Michael Kun

Employers who do business in California are already well aware of the wage-hour class actions that have besieged employers in virtually every industry.   Class claims for misclassification of employees as exempt employees or independent contractors first began to be filed more than a decade ago, and continue to be filed on a daily basis.  Claims for alleged work off-the-clock and missed meal and rest periods by non-exempt employees generally began later, but continue to be filed at an alarming rate. 

Now we can add to those cases a new wave of California class actions ...

On January 14, 2011, EpsteinBeckerGreen helped one of its restaurant clients, the Brasserie Ruhlmann, obtain summary judgment “in its entirety” in a lawsuit brought by former waiters, bussers, and runners (“Plaintiffs”).  Similar to many such wage and hour cases currently being litigated in the hospitality industry, Plaintiffs sought to invalidate the restaurant’s tip pool with assertions that captains and the banquet coordinator performed managerial functions and, thus, were not “tip eligible.”  If Plaintiffs had succeeded, they would have also ...

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Kasten v. Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics Corp., __ U.S. __ (March 22, 2011), holds that an employee’s oral complaint of a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) constitutes protected conduct under the FLSA’s anti-retaliation provision. 

EBG partner Frank C. Morris, Jr., discusses in an EBG Act Now Advisory the fact that the Kasten decision is merely the latest in an ever-growing series of cases where the Supreme Court has broadly interpreted protections against retaliation and for whistleblowers.  The EBG Act Now ...

By:  Kara M. Maciel

A Maryland federal court recently ruled in Gionfriddo v. Jason Zink LLC that the owner and operator of two taverns could not qualify as a  “tipped employee” under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) and the Maryland Wage and Hour Law despite that he also worked as a bartender at his establishments.  Thus, while he contributed tips to the tip pool arrangement when he worked as a bartender, he could not also share in the distribution of the tips.  The court stated that allowing an owner to participate in a tip pool would broaden the FLSA’s tip credit provisions to a ...