Employment Archive
California Overtime at the Car Wash: Are Inspection Numbers for Real?
November 2nd, 2009. By AbiK
By now you’ve read the news about the California Labor Commissioner imposing close to $1 million in fines after a statewide investigation of the California carwash industry.
The investigation went as follows:
42 investigators
did
230 car wash inspections
netting
141 citations
for
103 car wash businesses
The citations issued total $916,711.
Ok, great. There’s some progress. But here’s the part I’m having a hard time swallowing (as reported at Reuters; the bold is mine)…
Investigators found 49 businesses that failed to provide workers’ compensation coverage for their employees. Citations issued totaled $240,000 and businesses without workers’ compensation
Week Adjourned: 10.30.09
October 30th, 2009. By LucyC
The Age of the Overtime Class Action…
Top Class Actions
Wells, It’s Official… Wells Fargo is now facing a wages and overtime class action filed by technical support staff who allege that they were not paid for time worked in excess of 40 hours per week.
The suit covers all network engineers, operating systems engineers, information security analysts, technical service specialists, systems support analysts, web engineers, web support engineers, web systems engineers, operating systems analysts (level 2), systems QA analysts (levels 2 or 3), computer operations analysts (levels 3 or 4), database administrators (levels 2 or 3), and applications systems engineers (level 3) who worked for Wells Fargo as exempt employees at any time during the past three years anywhere in the United States. It is estimated that about 3,000 employees are eligible to participate in the unpaid overtime class action.
Eligible employees have 75 days to join the lawsuit.
BOA Constricting Overtime Pay? And then there’s Bank of America: A lawsuit was filed this week on behalf of telephone-dedicated employees for unpaid wages and overtime worked at company call centers across the country. The lawsuit was filed as a collective action, which
Right To Work vs. Employment at Will: what’s the difference?
October 28th, 2009. By Kristine B
Lately, I’ve been researching state employment laws (for the record, I do have a life). And I’ve come across a lot of people who are confused “right to work” and “employment at will.” Can’t say I blame them. So, this week Pleading Ignorance is setting the record straight about…
The difference between ”right to work” and “employment at will”
Both “right to work” and “employment at will” are, obviously, employment terms. One has to do with hiring employees (hopefully you) the other has to do with firing employees (hopefully not you).
Right to Work 
“Right to work” laws govern hiring of employees. In a nutshell, “right to work” means that a person has the right to work for a company without being required to either join a union or financially support a union. Basically, if you live in a “right to work” state, joining a union, or paying union dues, can’t be a condition of your employment.
Even in “right to work” states, unions can still legally operate. In fact, they may even still represent all employees in grievances and negotiations. However, they can’t force a person to join the union or pay union dues if the person doesn’t want to.
Now, there are arguments both for and against “right to work” laws. The short version is that
Overtime Pay: How do I Know if my Employer Owes me Money?
October 5th, 2009. By Kristine B
Yeah, it sounds like a bad Whitney Houston flashback…”How will I know if he…” Whoa there—back on topic. Overtime pay? Good question. So that’s the focus of this week’s Pleading Ignorance.
If you’ve opened a newspaper lately—or looked at virtually any news website including our own recent post on 61 companies with OT pay issues—you’ll know one of the major issues in US courts right now is Overtime Pay—or more aptly, missing overtime pay from a lot of folks’ paychecks. What you might not have known is that overtime laws in the US are not as clear-cut as many people think. In fact, if you’re not getting overtime pay there’s still a chance you should be. How’s that? Read on…
Overtime in a Nutshell
Basically, overtime occurs when a person works more than a set amount of time either daily (over 8 hours in a day), or weekly (over 40 hours in a week). Overtime is regulated by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and by state laws. When both the state and the FLSA cover overtime, employers must go with whichever one holds the employer to the highest standards—essentially meaning whichever one provides the most pay to the employee (that’s good news for the employee).
When an employee works more than 8 hours in a day or 40 hours in a week—and let’s be honest, who hasn’t worked that much at some point—the employee is supposed to get 1.5 times her regular wage (that’s the “time and a half” everyone’s always talking about).
So, let’s say an employee makes $10 an hour and works 44 hours in a week. The employee should be paid $10 for the first 40 hours and $15 for the additional 4 hours.
Seems straightforward, no? But it’s not, because not everyone is eligible for overtime pay and that is where things can get kind of tricky, to put it mildly.
Jack in the Box workers most likely get Jack in Overtime Lawsuits
October 5th, 2009. By AbiK
Hey, these are tough times. Just about every business is feeling the pinch and some, like a collection of Jack in the Box franchises owned by Roseville, California developer Abe Alizadeh, are feeling so pinched that they’re filing for bankruptcy protection. “Protection” is a key word here—and it’s the word folks like Patricia Morgan are focusing in on because it’s the word that’ll keep the likes of her and potentially 5,300 former co-workers of hers out of any settlement for unpaid overtime, unpaid hourly wages, and compensation for being required to work during rest breaks and unpaid lunch periods.
Morgan was fired from her job at Jack in the Box in 2008. As reported in the Sacramento Bee, it seems Morgan may have been having an “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore” moment over the working conditions on the overnight shifts at Jack in the Box. Only thing is, she got canned before she perhaps was fed up enough to just walk on her own.
Ah, but then the truth (alleged!) came out and it seems there was a root cause for Morgan’s disenchantment with her working conditions. They sucked. Things like having to attend to
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