Employment Legal News Articles & Interviews

Sacramento, CA SkyWest flight attendants are proceeding with their meal and rest break proposed class action after a California judge rejected the airline’s argument that federal regulations governing the airline industry preempt their claims.

San Francisco, CA On July 8, ABM Industries entered into a written agreement to settle the consolidated lawsuits, ABM Industries Overtime Cases (also known as the “Bucio case”), pending in the Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco. Filed in 2006, the lawsuits allege that ABM’s prior timekeeping and payment practices shortchanged as many as 50,000 janitorial employees in violation of the California Labor Code. Under the terms of the proposed settlement, ABM will pay a total sum of $140 million to resolve all claims. The settlement remains subject to court approval.

Washington, DC The U.S. Government Accountability Office recently reported that the price tag to clean up per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from nearly 700 military bases nationwide will probably exceed -- and cost taxpayers-- $2.1 billion. According to the Department of Defense (DOD) that price is up from $1.1 billion last year.

Chicago, IL Family Dollar collected Mantrise Herron’s fingerprints without her permission in apparent violation of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). BIPA is a privacy-protection law, and Herron v. Family Dollar Inc. is a class action privacy protection lawsuit. But privacy is increasingly a luxury for the well-heeled and well-informed. The rubber hits the road when privacy concerns become unpaid wages claims or employment discrimination lawsuits. This is where many workers begin. Let us also begin at the beginning….

San Francisco, CA A former Uber driver claims in a California labor lawsuit that he was terminated due to poor ratings from passengers and the ride-sharing app’s star-based ratings system is racist. San Francisco U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria somewhat agrees, at least at the pleading stage, saying that “the inference that Uber’s practice is racially discriminatory is … strong.”

Wilmington, DE M.P. Moon will have another chance to persuade a Delaware federal court that DuPont and its corporate predecessors and successors cheated him and similarly situated retirees of thousands of dollars in pension benefits. His ERISA lawsuit describes years of misinformation, followed by internal procedural rules that protected DuPont from the necessity of correcting its own error.

Sacramento, CA On June 8, U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara A. McAuliffe recommended that the Eastern District of California certify several classes of plaintiffs in Trevino v. Golden State FC LLC. In Trevino, workers at various Amazon fulfillment centers alleged that the internet retail giant had violated the California Labor Code by failing to pay wages due for regular and overtime hours worked and provide required meal and rest periods. The lawsuit sought class action certification for groups of similarly situated workers who could number in the hundreds of thousands and who worked at 50 California facilities. The Magistrate determined, however, that the claims of some workers were too individualized to merit inclusion in a class action lawsuit. 

Los Angeles, CA A former senior vice president for City National Bank, a subsidiary of Royal Bank of Canada, alleges he was fired because of whistleblower retaliation and in violation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which allows California employees to sue their employers in federal court if the employer wrongfully terminates or retaliates against them for reporting potential unlawful conduct

Baltimore, MD Pilgrim’s Pride Group, one of many poultry processors/defendants, has agreed to settle out of Jien v. Perdue Farms Inc. for $29 million and an agreement to cooperate against the remaining defendants. Rather than proceeding as an unpaid wages claim, Jien was brought as an antitrust case under the Sherman Act. The Sherman Act prohibits anticompetitive practices and has been used recently to protect wages. For workers, the effect of “wage-fixing” across an industry is very like the effect of failing to pay legally-required wages. Exploited workers, doing dangerous jobs, live at or near poverty.

New York, NY Jander v. Retirement Plans Committee of IBM, a long-running employee stock ownership lawsuit, settled on April 2, 2021 for $4.75 million. The attorneys who represented the retirement plan participants have now requested $1.4 million in fees for the latest Supreme Court phase of the case. In deciding whether to approve the fee, the Southern District of New York will consider the time and effort the lawyers expended.