Notes from the Field
Posted on 11-Dec-08 by The Timekeeper
Just a few bits and pieces from the judicial world that might be of interest to those of us dealing with time and attendance / wage and hour issues:
Wal*Mart Settles
News comes that Wal*Mart has settled a wage-and-hour lawsuit in Minnesota for $54 million. The suit alleged that Wal*Mart managers forced employees to work off the clock without pay, and that the company failed to maintain accurate time and attendance records.
The judge has already ruled the company was guilty, and Wal*Mart has already been assessed $6.5 million in back pay. This settlement just takes care of the separate “penalty phase” of the trial. Considering if they’d gone to trial and been assessed the maximum legal penalties, this case could have cost them $2 billion (yep, with a “b”), $54 million seems like getting off cheap in comparison.
SkyWest Wins (Sortof)
From Law.com, we learn that collective bargaining agreements and Federal law may, at least in some situations, trump state wage and hour laws.
In a suit before U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw of the Southern District of California, Tiffany Blackwell, who worked for SkyWest from November 2002 to December 2004, claimed (among other things) she received no meal breaks, or meal breaks of less than 30 minutes, or late meal breaks, all of which violate California wage and hour law.
However, Judge Sabraw granted summary judgment in favor of SkyWest — meaning those allegations don’t even proceed to trial — on most of the points at issue. First, the judge ruled that because Blackwell was a member of Skywest’s Frontline Association, an organization that represents ticket agents in labor negotiations, the collective bargaining agreement they negotiated with SkyWest under the Railway Labor Act pre-empted her claims for unpaid overtime wages, meal and rest periods.
And if that weren’t enough, the judge also found the Airline Deregulation Act overrode the claims made under state law. She wrote, “Here, SkyWest has offered uncontroverted evidence that meal and break periods may conflict with federal aviation safety and security regulations. Thus, requiring SkyWest to provide Agents meal and rest periods could result in cascading flight delays, increased risk of death or serious injury to passengers and damage to aircraft, and security breaches.”
Wow. Who knew letting a ticket agent grab a sandwich could have such dire consequences? Live and learn.
However, all is not lost for Blackwell. The judge did allow some of her claims to go forward to trial, specifically: Blackwell claims that SkyWest deducted 30-minute meal breaks from her paychecks, even when she didn’t get a meal break, resulting in off-the-clock work that violated the state’s minimum wage laws (of course, regular readers here already know about the pitfalls of the “standard lunch deduction”), and that the company deducted from her paycheck costs associated with employee travel benefits without her authorization.
And From the Other Coast…
In a further development in the case I just linked to above, where New York hospital workers were suing because the hospitals where they worked were deducting a standard lunch period from their pay, even when their lunch period was shorted or even eliminated by work emergencies…
Well, I’m still following up on this one to get the details, but apparently a judge has ruled that a collective bargaining agreement mandating arbitration for grievances does not prevent the employees from proceeding with their wage and hour lawsuit.
So if you were hoping you could insert a mandatory arbitration clause in your labor contract and use that as a “get out of court cases free” card, might want to consult with your lawyer. Your protection may not be as absolute as you think.
Related Posts
No Comments
No comments yet.
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Leave a comment
