An employee at a large secured facility argued that a 30-minute meal break was effectively coercive because the walk to the parking lot consumed most of it. The DOL disagreed — and the reasoning applies to any employer whose physical layout makes leaving the premises during a break impractical.
Some salaried employees want to pick up extra hourly shifts — in a warehouse, on a retail floor, at a patient bedside. The DOL just confirmed that arrangement can work under the FLSA, with conditions worth understanding before you build it into your scheduling.
Seven minutes doesn’t sound like much. Multiply it by 18,000 employees, every workday, and it’s a wage and hour audit waiting to happen.
The city’s civil-service commission told it to follow its own hiring policies. It didn’t. It still won.
A restaurant charged its servers a dollar a shift for silverware and pens. That dollar voided the tip credit for every hour every server ever worked, and the liquidated damages doubled the bill.
A teacher gets twice the students, a warning for observing a religious holiday, and a misconduct investigation after venting on a union Facebook page. She loses every claim.
COVID-era telework was an emergency exception. Courts aren’t treating it as a permanent rewrite of job requirements.
A pharmaceutical company’s compliance officer claimed she spent years flagging what she believed were Anti-Kickback Statute violations. What followed, according to her complaint: bogus HR investigations, a forced apology, a retaliatory performance review, a final warning memo, interference with her medical leave while she was undergoing cancer treatment, and ultimately termination. The employer moved to dismiss on statute of limitations grounds. The New Jersey Appellate Division just reversed.
Sometimes the facts supporting a religious accommodation denial are so strong that skipping the accommodation process doesn’t sink you. This healthcare employer found that out — and the 9th Circuit’s reasoning tells you exactly why.
The Employer Handbook Blog