- If you imagine the primary goal of occupational licensure is to protect consumers, think again [Donald Boudreaux, Ramesh Ponnuru]
- “U.S. Civil Rights Commissioners Take EEOC to Task on Background Checks” [Nick Fishman, Employee Screen; Seyfarth Shaw]
- Pennsylvania lawmakers consider ending union exemption from stalking laws; Illinois, Nevada and California also shelter them from liability [Washington Examiner]
- “How Disruptive Can an Aggressive NLRB Be in a Non-Union Setting? More Than You Might Think” [Michael Fox]
- “A call for the DOL to fix what is wrong with our wage-and-hour laws” [Jon Hyman]
- Restaurant Opportunities Center, known for staging employee protests, bars own employees from same privilege [Florida Watchdog via Sean Higgins]
- Conference honoring assassinated professor Marco Biagi showcases classical liberal labor law scholarship (or so one would hope) [my comment at Workplace Prof, related call for papers, earlier]
Posts Tagged ‘wage and hour suits’
Labor and wage-hour roundup
- Nomination of David Weil as Labor Department wage/hour chief could be flashpoint in overtime furor [Terence Smith, Hill] Another reaction to President’s scheme [Don Boudreaux, Cafe Hayek, earlier here and here]
- Oregon: longshoreman’s union says NLRB charges of blinding, threatened rape meant “to distract” [Oregonian]
- Who thinks hiking the minimum wage would kill jobs? Company chief financial officers, to name one group [Steve Hanke, Cato]
- Tourists’ casual naivete about union politics at NYC hotel made for tension, hilarity [How May We Hate You via @tedfrank]
- Just for fun: Wichita business’s creative responses to union’s “Shame On…” signs reach Round 2 [Volokh on first round, Subaru of Wichita on second round]
- Workers’ comp claims at government agencies in Maryland can be odd [Baltimore Sun via Jeff Quinton]
- Are unions losing their grip on the California Democratic Party? [Dan Walters]
Overtime scheme more dangerous to economy than minimum wage hike
So says Coyote, and I agree with him (earlier here).
…companies will quickly restructure their work processes to make sure no one works overtime. And since their new hires are working just a straight 40 hours (with mandatory unpaid lunch break time in CA), they will likely pay less. If I am paying $40,000 a year for someone who will work extra hours for me, I am not going to pay that amount to someone just punching a time clock. And the whole psychological relationship is changed – a salaried person is someone on the management team. A person punching a timeclock may not be treated the same way. …
…for those who think schools assign too much homework, this could well be the end of homework. The most dangerous possible thing with hourly workers is to give them the ability to assign themselves unlimited overtime. Teachers could do this at home with grading papers. If I were a school, I would ban teachers from doing any grading or schoolwork prep at home — after all, it’s hourly and probably overtime and they could work unlimited hours at home and how would you get it under control? The only way to manage it would be to ban it entirely.
He marches through some of the implications, all bad, for employee travel (why allow it except for the direst company needs if every hour on the road is going to be paid at time and a half?), ObamaCare incentives, and the erosion of a minimum pay guarantee for those whose salary now provides one. (On the homework issue, incidentally, teachers are exempt under current FLSA rules; grading papers at home would only be dangerous assuming a change in those rules.)
Obama’s new overtime decree
Here comes a more regimented, polarized, lawsuit-ridden workplace with less upward mobility — at least if the President gets his way. I deplore some of the likely effects, unintended or otherwise, in a new Cato post: “Increasingly, Obama’s binge of executive orders and unilateral decrees to bypass Congress is coming to resemble a toddler’s destructive tantrum.” More: Daniel Schwartz, Daniel Fisher. Our wage and hour law category has more than 80 posts.
More from Scott Shackford, Reason, from Brett Logiurato at Business Insider on organized business opposition, and from the WSJ. And from George Leef, John Locke Institute:
The Fair Labor Standards Act is the federal statute that imposes the minimum wage along with other intrusions into what ought to be matters of contract between the parties.There is no real constitutional authority for the federal government to dictate the terms of labor contracts. During the New Deal, Congress relied upon the notion that if anything might have any possible effect on interstate commerce, then it’s fair game for federal control. That idea stretches the concept of interstate commerce far beyond its intended meaning.
Yet more: Welcome Andrew Sullivan, Washington Times readers. And see followup post (why this could do much more damage to economy than minimum wage hike)
Great moments in successor liability
Safer to have the failed business go through total liquidation, it seems:
An employer that acquired the assets of a defunct bar and restaurant and continued to operate a restaurant on the same premises was liable for unpaid wages owed to the defunct restaurant’s former employees, the Oregon Supreme Court has ruled. Blachana LLC v. Bureau of Labor and Industries, No. S060789 (Ore. Jan. 16, 2014).
Reversing the Oregon Court of Appeals, the Court found that the Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) did not err in deciding the employer was a successor for state wage liability purposes because it conducted “essentially the same business as conducted by the predecessor,” even though it did not employ any of the predecessor’s employees. [emphasis added]
Schaden, meet freude
“Obamacare Call Center Faces Unpaid Wages & Overtime Class Action Lawsuit” [BigClassAction.com]
Tales from the business of wage and hour litigation
“So… stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Man sues staffing agency and Biglaw firm for overtime — because document review isn’t really legal work. Man then applies to the exact same staffing agency for more document review work — touting all his legal experience reviewing documents.” [Alex Rich, Above the Law]
SCOTUS resolves one unclarity of federal wage and hour law
Only 1,999 unclarities left to go. I explain yesterday’s decision in Sandifer v. U.S. Steel Corp., the “don/doff” case, at Cato at Liberty (& welcome SCOTUSBlog readers).
Labor and employment roundup
- Labor Department wants to shut down consignors-as-volunteers consignment-sale business plan [Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Sean Higgins/Examiner]
- Operating Engineers Local 17: “Legality of union violence at heart of court case” [Buffalo News]
- Alternative to “Ban the Box”: revisit extent to which old convictions stay on the books [Eli Lehrer; Baltimore Sun on municipal proposal]
- Human capital investment by women has narrowed gender pay gap, desire for time flexibility crucial in explaining what remains [Tyler Cowen on Claudia Goldin paper]
- Carl Horowitz on UAW push to organize VW in Chattanooga [Capital Research Center]
- Seyfarth Shaw’s 10th annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report [Seyfarth, Daniel Fisher]
- Sixth Circuit: transfer can count as adverse action even when employee had previously requested it [Jon Hyman]
Labor and employment law roundup
- On minimum wage, 1987-vintage Times beats undrinkable current Times (via @davidharsanyi) How we wish the law of demand would somehow suspend operation [The Economist, Todd Eberly]
- L.A.: four restaurant workers awarded $5.7M in age bias lawsuit [LADN]
- Highly menacing NLRB “persuader” regulations not dead [Labor Union Report] In D.L. Horton case, Fifth Circuit rejects NLRB position that pre-dispute arbitration waiving class/collective rights violates labor law [Jon Hyman, Gerald Maatman/Lily Strumwasser, WLF]
- “How Much Does It Cost To Make A Wage And Hour Case Go Away?” [Laura Reasons, Seyfarth] Banning unpaid internships a bad idea [Yglesias] Interns who sued employers can’t find jobs [CNN Money, auto-plays]
- NYU decides to let grad students unionize through non-NLRB channel [al-Jazeera]
- New headache for managers: class actions filed against employers (yes, employers) under Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) [Jottings by an Employer’s Lawyer]
- de Blasio owes SEIU big and now the bills will come due [Newsday]