Fair Labor Standards Act

Recent Decision Could Spell More Overtime Pay For New Jersey Workers

December 31, 2019 | Smith Eibeler LLC

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court recently found that a federal standard of calculating overtime is non-complaint with its state wage and hour laws. Specifically, the Court found that the Fluctuating Work Week (FWW) method of calculating overtime wages, adopted under the Fair Labor Standards Act, does not adequately compensate non-exempt employees at a time and half rate for hours worked over the standard 40 hour work week, as required by Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act (PMWA). The FWW methods is currently used by many companies throughout the U.S., including New Jersey. Because of the similarities between Pennsylvania and New Jersey state wage and hour and wage payment laws, this decision may impact the rate at which some New Jersey’s employees are payed for their over time work.

Under the FWW method of calculating over time, it is permissible for an employer to calculate a non-exempt employees’ wages in the following way:

The employee works hours that fluctuate from week to week;

Out of Control: New Jersey Independent Contractor Misclassification Tackled by Task Force

August 21, 2019 | Smith Eibeler LLC

A recent gubernatorial task force has released a report addressing a major problem that many employees are facing across the state of New Jersey. According to the Report of Governor Murphy’s Task Force on Employee Misclassification, 12,315 employees were improperly classified as independent contractors, rather than employees, in 2018. This misclassification can cause major issues for workers by limiting their access to essential legal protections provided to New Jersey employees. There has been a growing trend of misclassification, with the number of employees misclassified as independent contractors increasing by 40% over the past decade. Unfortunately, this trend continues to create problems for workers across the State to this day, which is why Governor Murphy’s task force was so greatly needed.

Generally, in order to determine whether a worker is properly classified as an employee or an independent contractor for wage payment law and wage and hour law purposes, New Jersey courts utilize what is known as the ‘ABC Test.’ The ABC Test starts off with a presumption that a worker is an employee. An employer can rebut this presumption only if they can establish the existence of each of the following three factors:

The worker is free from control or direction in the performance of their services, both under the contract and in fact;

Just Desserts: Child Slavery Suit Against Chocolate Companies Can Go Forward

November 2, 2018 | Smith Eibeler LLC

Defenders of labor rights face an uphill battle addressing the widespread abuses facing workers around the world. Most industrialized nations have legal protections in place establishing standards for labor conditions, but in many parts of the world this is not the case. In our globalized economy, corporations in industrialized nations take advantage of this reality and set their manufacturing and production operations to those nations, to access relatively inexpensive labor. In the worst of these cases, workers have no protections whatsoever, and live in slavery. Recently, a United States federal court took a step to hold some of these companies responsible, for being at least complicit in a system supported by slavery, as the court put it in “receiving cocoa at a price that would not be obtainable without employing child slave labor.”

Last month the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision of a California District Court Judge’s in the case John Doe I, et. al. v. Nestle, S.A., et. al. In this case, the unnamed plaintiffs allege that a group of corporate defendants in the business of processing cocoa beans were complicit in a system of widespread child slavery that occurred on cocoa plantations in the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire, a nation on the West African coast. The plaintiffs in the case, identified only as John Doe’s I–VI, allege that they were victimized by these companies and the decisions those companies made in pursuing profits, up to and including condoning the use of child slave labor on the plantations of their cocoa suppliers.

The defendants in this case, Nestle, Cargill, and Archer Daniels Midland, are each large multinational corporations and are among the world’s largest manufacturers, purchasers, processors, and retail sellers of cocoa beans. The plaintiffs are not U.S. citizens, but were able to file their suit in U.S. Federal Court on the basis of the Alien Tort Statute, or the “ATS.” That statute, originally passed in the Judiciary Act of 1789, provides original jurisdiction to the federal courts for foreign citizens to seek redress for harms suffered as the result of a tort committed in violation of the law of nations. Among other torts, courts have found torture, genocide, war crimes, and slavery to be actionable under the ATS.

Congress Passes the “Save America’s Pastime Act” to Screw Minor League Baseball Players Out of Minimum Wage and Overtime Pay

March 30, 2018 | Smith Eibeler LLC

Less than one week from Opening Day of the major league baseball season, Congress has passed legislation that will exempt minor league baseball players from the wage protections mandated under the federal Fair Labor Standard Act (“FLSA”). This means that Major League Baseball and Minor League Baseball will not be required to pay their minor league baseball players a minimum wage, any overtime pay, or any compensation for spring training or during the off season.

The legislation will also likely put an end to a pending lawsuit brought by minor league players in which they are attempting to gain the legal wage protections available under the FLSA. The lawsuit was filed in 2014 by lead plaintiff and former minor leaguer, Aaron Senne, who argued on behalf of himself and other minor league baseball players, that Major League Baseball and Minor League Baseball were violating the FLSA by not paying the players minimum wage and overtime pay. Most minor league players make less than $7,500 a season and work between 50-60 hours a week during the season without factoring in travel time. Minor league games take place six to seven days a week and require extensive travel for the players.

The FLSA requires that employers pay covered employees no less than $7.25 for every hour worked. Most states have similar minimum wage laws in place, such as New Jersey that has enacted the New Jersey Wage and Hour Act. The New Jersey Wage and Hour Act currently mandates employers pay eligible employees a minimum wage of $8.60 per hour. The FLSA also requires that employers pay covered employees overtime pay for hours worked over 40 in a workweek at a rate not less than time and one-half their regular rates of pay. The New Jersey Wage and Hour law contains the same provision requiring employees provide eligible employees with overtime compensation.