Articles Tagged with California wage and hour attorney

Wage and hour disputes in Los Angeles are an increasingly common complaint. Employers sometimes cut corners to avoid paying workers the full amount. In some instances, workers are mis-classified as independent contractors rather than employees, depriving them of receipt of important benefits, such as workers’ compensation and overtime pay.

This is increasingly becoming problematic in this digital age, as a recent case out of Northern California highlights. The San Francisco Chronicle reports an employee of a major online retailer is claiming the employer is not giving breaks and not paying overtime at his employment location.

Of course, it is possible for employers to make an honest clerical error and short a paycheck merely by accident. However, even then, the employee should be able to point out the mistake and get the issue resolved fairly quickly.  If the employer is not willing to promptly correct the payroll issue, this is a good sign there may be bigger problems at hand. Continue Reading ›

Employee misclassification is a major violation of California labor law that happens far to often. The issue is whether a worker is an actual employee or an independent contractor. An employee works for an employer and is under the direct supervision of the employer, manager, or supervisor.

Employees are told how to do the job, and most if not all aspects of the job performance are governed by the employer.  The employee also is entitled to benefits including health care and, if they work more than 40 hours in a pay week, are entitled to overtime assuming they are paid by the hour as opposed to being on salary.  Continue Reading ›

The United States has the largest prison population in the world.  There have been various attempts over the years to change sentencing and get rid of mandatory minimums for non-violent offenses, but even that hasn’t been able to resolve this concerning trend. In fact, new attorney general has issued orders to all federal prosecutors to charge all offenses to the highest level possible and go for mandatory minimums whenever possible. This is of course good business for the companies that run many of our nations prisons, so at least for now, this numbers are expected to increase.

A recent news article from Food Tank, self-described think tank for food, lists the current incarceration rate at 66 prisoners per 10,000 U.S. citizens.  This is an astounding number when you look at virtually every other nation in the world. Continue Reading ›

In an ideal world, every labor law and employee contract would be written in such a way that is clear and unambiguous to all parties involved in the employment relationship, especially the employee.  It would be fair to the employer as well, and there would not be any issues.  We obviously do not live in that ideal world, as many employers take advantage of their employees and try to use contract clause ambiguity and statutory ambiguity to get away with what they are doing.

According a recent article from the American Bar Association (ABA) Journal, heavy litigation in a case involving overtime pay for dairy delivery drivers is being decided based upon the placement of a comma in an ambiguous state law.   This case was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Continue Reading ›

In Hill v. Delaware North Co. Sportservice, the plaintiffs worked at the concessions at Oriole Park at Camden Yards.  This is the stadium where the Baltimore Orioles play their home games.  This was an employment lawsuit filed over an alleged breach of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).  The FLSA applies to employees in many situations in this jurisdiction as well as in the state of California.

In Hill, these employees were working for a company that provides concessions, including the sale of food and merchandise, at the baseball stadium.  These days, it is much more likely that the people who work at a stadium or other type of large event work for a contractor as opposed to the owners of the facility itself.  These contractors, of which there are only couple in each region of the county, will typically handle concessions for many different facilities.  Since there is not full-time work at any one stadium in most cases, it is common for these employees to work at different sporting facilities and convection centers to get more hours.  This is also true in terms of the private security personnel at a sporting event though they are usually employed by a different contractor than the one that handles the food and merchandise concessions. There is no question that sporting events are big business, and this is just part of the business. Continue Reading ›