Woodley & McGillivary Employment Law Blog

Misclassified Salaries Employees Entitled to Overtime Pay Under Federal Law

Posted: Friday, August 27, 2010

Employers often misclassify workers as "exempt," from the overtime requirements of the law on the bogus basis that workers are salaried. Merely because an employee is salaried, does not mean that the employee has to work without receivi...

Department of Labor Awards Smartsoft International Employees $1 Million in Back Wages

Posted: Tuesday, August 24, 2010

The Georgia computer consulting company Smartsoft International, Inc., will pay back wages and interest totaling $1 million to 135 employees working under the H-1B visa program. The agreement resulted from an investigation by the Department o...

Department of Labor Investigates Pay Practices in the Health Care Industry

Posted: Monday, August 16, 2010

The Department of Labor ("DOL") is investigating pay practices throughout the health care industry after finding that many hospitals and nursing homes do not pay proper overtime to nurses and other employees who work more than 40 hours a week...

Richmond Hill Food Store Employees Receive $840,000 in Back Pay

Posted: Wednesday, August 11, 2010

The owner of four Richmond Hill food stores entered into an agreement with the Department of Labor ("DOL") to pay 42 employees $840,000 in back pay and overtime compensation. In 2008, the DOL brought a lawsuit against the Queens, New York bus...

City of Charlotte, North Carolina Agrees to Settle Police Overtime Suit

Posted: Monday, August 9, 2010

The City of Charlotte, North Carolina has agreed to pay 32 current and former police sergeants a total of $71,025 as well as 1,530 hours of compensatory time to settle a Fair Labor Standards Act ("FLSA") lawsuit. For more information on...

Prominent Tobacco Company Settles with Employees in Overtime Suit Alleging Electronic Timekeeping System Prevented Overtime Pay

Posted: Wednesday, August 4, 2010

The cigarette maker R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. has settled an overtime class action suit, brought by 394 employees, for an undisclosed amount. The class action suit claimed that as a company policy R. J. Reynolds refused to pay overtime, and ...

Nurses Able To Proceed With Wage-Fixing Claims Under Anti-Trust Laws

Posted: Monday, August 2, 2010

A group of registered nurses in the Albany, New York area have won two key victories, allowing them to proceed with a class action lawsuit against two hospitals, Ellis Hospital and Albany Medical Center, who they have alleged were...

Bethpage Catering Employees to Receive $93K in Labor Suit

Posted: Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Fourteen employees at Sterling Caterers & Restaurant, a Bethpage, New York based company, have accepted a settlement in a federal lawsuit filed on their behalf, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, b...

FedEx to Pay $3 Million to Massachusetts for Misclassifying Drivers

Posted: Friday, July 23, 2010

Federal Express is reimbursing the state of Massachusetts $3 million dollars as a result of i...

Federal Court: Pharmaceutical Sales Representatives Entitled to Overtime Pay

Posted: Wednesday, July 21, 2010

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit unanimously ruled on July 6, 2010, that a ...

Charter Communications Settles Overtime Case for $18 Million

Posted: Monday, July 19, 2010

A group of technicians from nine states recently reached an $18 million settlement with their employer, a large national cable company, for unpaid overtime. The field technicians are current or former employees of Charter Communica...

Female Employees Awarded over $250 Million in Sex Discrimination Class Action Against Pharmaceutical Company

Posted: Wednesday, June 9, 2010

In one of the largest class action discrimination cases, a jury found that the pharmaceutical company Novartis had discriminated against thousands of female sales representatives over promotion, pay, and p...

The DOL Finds Mortgage Loan Officers Entitled to FLSA Overtime.

Posted: Wednesday, June 9, 2010

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) announced that mortgage loan officers do not qualify as administrative ...

Maryland Retail Employees Entitled to a Shift Break Beginning in March, 2011

Posted: Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Effective March 1, 2011, employees who work in retail in Maryland are entitled to a mandatory shift break. The new law (Healthy Retail Employee Act) requires retailer...

AFGE Local 1637 Settles FLSA Grievances with the Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCI Seagoville (TX)

Posted: Wednesday, June 9, 2010

AFGE Local 1639 settled its Fair Labor Standards Act ("FLSA") overtime pay grievances against the Federal Bureau of Prisons ("BOP"), FCI Seagoville for $1,000,000. In the grievances, the Union asserted that the BOP did not properly...