Miami Employment Lawyer Blog

Although many people think that wage and hour complaints are numerous in South Florida, it appears that employers all across the country are not paying their employees as required by federal law. Specifically, the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C. §201(b), et seq., requires covered employers to pay their non-exempt workers at least $7.25 per hour and at least $10.88 per hour for every hour worked over forty in a workweek. Unfortunately, many employers (large and small) are still not following this mandate.

For example, just last week the U.S. Department of Labor announced that Husk Energy, a petroleum refinery in Lima, Ohio, agreed to pay nearly $1,000,000 in back wages after an investigation by the Department of Labor in which it was found that its employees were not being paid overtime compensation. The company was also found to have not included a "shift differential" in calculating the regular rate for purposes of determining the overtime rate. As another example, Peach Tree Maintenance, Inc., a landscaping company in Nashville, Tennessee, also recently agreed to pay almost $450,000 in back wages after an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor. According to the Department of Labor, many of the employees were being paid a flat daily rate with no overtime compensation. And, in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, a health care company was also recently required to pay over $61,000 in back wages for the failure to pay overtime compensation to its employees. There, according to the Department of Labor, the company failed to combine the hours that the employees worked at two locations. In January of this year, the U.S. Department of Labor filed a lawsuit against Security Express Inc. and Broadway Protection, two security companies in Little Rock, Arkansas for the failure to pay minimum wages and overtime compensation under federal law. Finally, the Department of Labor announced two weeks ago that it will be conducting a probe of Utah restaurants in order to battle suspected violations of minimum wage and child labor provisions of federal law.

As these examples show, violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act and wage and hour laws are widespread across the country and the U.S. Department of Labor has apparently increased its enforcement of these laws. Employees must stay vigilant to ensure that employers are paying them as required by law.

Continue reading "Failure to Pay the Required Minimum Wage and Overtime Compensation Still Rampant in Many Parts of the U.S." »

In a previous blog entry, we wrote that "Rejecting Job Applicants Because of Their Credit Report May Constitute Illegal Discrimination." We are happy to report that many state senators and legislators are now seeking to make the use of credit checks for job applicants illegal. See "States May Ban Credit Checks on Job Applicants" published in The Miami Herald on March 1, 2010. Indeed, in the midst of the recession that has gripped the nation (and the world for that matter), people are losing their jobs and the lack of available jobs naturally leads to them getting behind in paying their bills, which in turn makes their credit scores go down. Then, employers refuse to hire them because of their credit score. It becomes a vicious circle. However, the fact that a prospective employee has a poor credit report is simply not an indicator of whether the employee can do the job or whether he or she will perform well.

The discriminatory aspect of this issue is that studies show that minorities generally have worse credit reports than non-minorities. Therefore, when a company has a practice of rejecting applicants because of their credit reports, then that practice, which has a disparate impact on minorities, may be a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Unless the policy of rejecting job applicants because of their credit report is related to the job and consistent with business necessity, the practice may constitute illegal discrimination.

Continue reading "States Try to Curb Credit Checks for Job Applicants as Illegal Discrimination" »