Overtime Advisor : New York Employment Lawyer & Attorney : Greenwald Doherty Law Firm : NY Wage & Hour & Discrimination : Overtime Advisor Law Blog

We’ve warned before about the potential issues raised when you utilize unpaid interns.  Employers used to be able to take a level of comfort from internships run through educational institutes but, no more. 

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As noted in our recent blog, Under Federal Law, Are You Required to Pay Your Employees for Their Breaks or Not?, various states and localities may have their own break laws and regulations that could apply to your business.  Those laws could cause even more confusion with as to if, whether to pay employees for breaks and/or meal time.  New York is among the states with specific laws on breaks.  

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An area of confusion for many employers, and thus an area in which wage and hour laws are often violated, involves breaks and meal periods.  Specifically, are employers required to pay their employees for break and/or meal time, and if so, when? This area of confusion has resulted in Auto Cricket Corp., doing business as AutoCricket.com, paying 414 employees a total of $76,589 in back wages following an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division.  

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Minimum wage is still an issue for many employers, as two agriculture employers recently learned.  And willful, repeated violations of the law can cause the U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”) to make a federal case of the issue. 

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Accused of doing just about everything wrong possible under the wage and hour law, a Boston processer of hides and furs is being sued by the DOL in federal court seeking $1,000,000.00 in back wages and damages.  According to the DOL, the company engaged in repeated “knowing, deliberate and intentional violations.” 

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A recent settlement between the US Department of Labor and First Republic Bank aptly illustrates the perils of misclassifying large numbers of employees under the overtime laws. 

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As discussed in our previous blogs, complaints by restaurant employees seem to be a big trend, and that trend seems to only continue to grow – and not only in New York City.  

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New Jersey’s Governor Chris Christie recently signed the Gender Pay Parity Bill (the “Bill”) which impacts New Jersey-based companies that employ fifty or more individuals.  Under the Bill, employers must post as well as physically provide a new notice to their employees to inform them of their right to be free from gender-based discrimination in the workplace.  

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Family Dollar Stores, a discount retailer chain in multiple states, is no stranger to lawsuits that stem from the executive exemption provision in the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”).  In order to meet the executive exemption, an employee’s primary duty must be management, they must supervise at least two Full-time employees, and must usually have the authority to hire and fire.  And if a court finds that an employee does not meet this exception, depending upon the size of the company and the length of wrongful classification, a company could incur significant monetary damages in back overtime pay owed. 

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