Halliburton Pays $18.3 Million in Overtime Wages to More than 1,000 of its Employees

On Tuesday, September 22, 2015, oil and gas service provider Halliburton entered into a settlement agreement with the Department of Labor.  Halliburton agreed to pay $18,293,557 in overtime wages to 1,016 employees nationwide.Gear-and-Gavel_gold

Halliburton misclassified employees in 28 job positions as exempt.  These positions included field service representatives, pipe recovery specialists, drilling tech advisors, perforating specialists and reliability tech specialists.  When these employees worked more than forty hours a week, Halliburton failed to pay them overtime wages in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).  Halliburton also failed keep accurate records of the hours these employees worked.  The company claims to have discovered it misclassified its employees during a self-audit. (more…)

Proposed Changes to Overtime Laws Will Help Millions of Employees Nationwide

In July, the United States Department of Labor (DOL) announced a new rule that would extend federal overtime protections to millions of “white collar” workers. (more…)

Connor v. First Student, Inc.:  California Law Protecting Employees from Illegal Background Checks is Constitutional

For the past six years Hunter Pyle Law, along with our excellent co-counsel Lewis, Feinberg, Lee and Jackson, P.C., have represented a group of approximately 1200 bus drivers who had illegal background checks run on them by their employer.  California law is very clear:  with some exceptions not Gear-and-Gavel_dark-bluerelevant here, before an employer can have a background check company run a background check on an employee, it must do the following:

  1. It must disclose, in a document consisting solely of that disclosure, that it intends to run a background check; and
  2. The employee must authorize the background check in writing.

Cal. Civil Code § 1786.16(a)(2).  The employer must take these two steps every time that it wants to run a background check.  If it does not, it is liable to the employee for a minimum of $10,000, plus attorneys’ fees and punitive damages.  Cal. Civil Code § 1786.50.

California’s background check law therefore provides critical protections for California workers.  This law was enacted because employers were having background checks run on employees without telling them.  Sometimes these background checks would contain wrong information that would then follow the employees around for years, preventing them from getting jobs.  The cases that prompted California’s Legislature to act are truly horrible, and involve people being unable to find work, becoming homeless, etc., all because of false information in background checks that they did not even know were being run.  (more…)

Being Classified as an Independent Contractor Instead of an Employee Denies Workers Important Benefits and Protections Under the Law

There is an increasing trend in this country for employers to misclassify employees as independent contractors. Workers who are misclassified as independent contractors are often denied important benefits and protections under the law, such as minimum wage, overtime compensation, family and medical leave, and Gear-and-Gavel_goldunemployment insurance. (more…)

The Road Ahead for California Truckers:  Rest Breaks, Piece-Rate Work, and Federal Preemption

Several cases over the past few years have made it much easier for truck drivers in California to collect unpaid wages for missed meal and rest breaks.  These decisions have also clarified that truck drivers in California who are paid by the mile or by the load must be paid separately for time that they are not actually Gear-and-Gavel_dark-bluedriving.  This means that companies that pay their drivers by the piece must also pay them an hourly rate for time spent doing things like vehicle inspections and stand-by time.

For example, in Bluford v. Safeway Stores, Inc., a group of truck drivers sued Safeway for unpaid rest breaks.  Section 226.7 of the California Labor Code and Industrial Welfare Commission Wage Order 9 require employers to permit employees to take 10 minute rest breaks for every four hours (or major portion thereof) worked.  The first rest break kicks in after three and a half hours of work.  The second kicks in after six hours, and the third after 10 hours.  In other words, an employee who works a shift that is more than 10 hours long is owed three rest breaks.  Although employees are free from job duties during these breaks, the employer is required to pay for them and cannot deduct the rest breaks from employees’ wages.

The Bluford drivers claimed that Safeway had violated these requirements because it paid drivers based upon miles driven and tasks performed, but did not pay them for their rest breaks.  Safeway responded that it did not deduct any pay from the drivers’ paychecks, and thus did not violate the law.

The California Court of Appeal agreed with the drivers.  The court held that the drivers’ claim that they were not paid separately for rest breaks was enough to state a claim under Wage Order 9.   In other words, where drivers are paid by the mile or by the task, the employer must pay them separately for their rest breaks.  (On a separate but related note, if a driver is unable to take a rest break, the employer must compensate him or her with an additional hour of pay.) (more…)

California Labor Commissioner Ruling that Uber Driver is an Employee is a Potential Big Win for California Employees

The California Labor Commissioner’s ruling this week that Uber drivers must be considered employees, not independent contractors, is a big step forward for the rights of hundreds of thousands of drivers in California. Although this ruling applies only to the driver Barbara Ann Berwick, who brought this complaint, it pavesGear-and-Gavel_gold the way for class action lawsuits that could force the company to fundamentally change the way it does business.  (more…)

“I want to sue my California employer for harassment and discrimination? But what happens if I lose my case?”

One important question that people often ask (and should ask) when thinking about suing their employer is, “What happens if I lose?  Do I have to pay the defendant any money?”Gear-and-Gavel_dark-blue

In answering this question, it is critical to understand the difference between attorneys’ fees and costs.  “Attorneys’ fees,” as the name indicates, are the actual fees that a defendant has paid to its attorneys to represent it in a lawsuit.  “Costs” refers to the various expenditures that are made during the course of litigation, and can include things such as filing fees and court reporter fees.

In Williams v. Chino Valley Independent Fire District S213100 (May 4, 2015) the California Supreme Court recently clarified the circumstances in which a plaintiff who files a case under the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) and loses must pay the defendant’s case costs.  The FEHA governs claims under California law for discrimination, harassment, and retaliation for complaining about discrimination and harassment, among other things.  The Williams opinion will therefore impact all cases involving such claims. (more…)

Are Employers Required to Reimburse Employees for Personal Cell Phones Used at Work?

More and more employers require employees to use their personal cell phones for work.  Yet California Labor Code section 2802 requires employers to reimburse employees for “all necessary expenditures or losses incurred by the employee in direct consequence of the discharge of his or her duties, or of his or her obedienceGear-and-Gavel_dark-blue to the directions of the employer.”  Over the past year, several cases have applied section 2802 to personal cell phones that employees are required to use at work-and required the employers to pay for the costs of those phones.  This post explores some of those cases.

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Hunter Pyle to speak in Webinar re PAGA Claims

On April 6, 2015, at 10 am Pacific Standard Time, I will be be speaking in a webinar that is devoted to PAGA claims.  A description follows:

In the wake of the US Supreme Court’s decision not to interfere, for now, in California’s treatment of PAGA waivers in arbitration agreements, is PAGA poised to become the next “it” claim in wage and hour Gear-and-Gavel_dark-bluelitigation? This program will explore the ever changing PAGA landscape, offering practitioner insight into how best to prepare for the anticipated uptick of representative action litigation.

Topics include:

Evaluating the pros and cons of PAGA
Drafting Arbitration Agreements
Litigating PAGA Actions
Cases Sitting before the 9th Circuit
How Employers can avoid PAGA Claims

The Webinar Faculty: Lisa Brown – Grube Brown & Geidt LLP, Glenn Danas – Capstone Law APC, Hunter Pyle – Hunter Pyle Law.

Judge Chen, Judge Henderson, and a Ray of Sunshine re PAGA Claims in Hernandez v. DMSI

On January 11, 2015 I posted a comment about how some federal district courts in California were rejecting the part of Iskanian v. CLS Transportation (2014) 59 Cal.4th 348 in which Justice Goodwin Liu held that arbitration agreements that prevent workers from bringing representative claims under California’s Private Gear-and-Gavel_dark-blueAttorneys General Act, or PAGA, are unenforceable.  As of last count, at least six courts had reached that unfortunate conclusion.

Recently, two judges in the Northern District of California have bucked this tide and sided with Justice Liu.  In Hernandez v. DMSI Staffing, LLC, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 12824 (February 3, 2015), Judge Edward Chen correctly held that PAGA waivers are unenforceable.  According to Judge Chen, allowing such waivers would frustrate PAGA’s objectives because it would bar representative claims that are brought to protect the rights of employees under the California Labor Code.   (more…)