Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)

Subscribe to Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) via RSS

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) into law, it was a landmark and welcome law that originally only applied to about 20% of the labor force (mostly factory workers). The law banned oppressive child labor, set minimum wage at 25 cents per hour, and set a maximum workweek at 44 hours.

Over the past 75 years, the FLSA has morphed into a complex and highly-litigated area of the law that regulates nearly all workplaces. It is now almost universally despised by employers. Decades of amendments have made the FLSA so expansive it requires multi-volume sets of legal treatises to fully comprehend, its nuances ensure almost no employer can fully comply, and plaintiffs’ attorneys crank out lawsuits by the dozens, knowing a single dollar owed entitles them to recover all of the attorney’s fees spent prosecuting the case.

Continue Reading A Labor Day Toast to Seven Subjects the FLSA Does Not (Yet) Regulate

Yesterday, April 16, 2013, the United States Supreme Court rendered a significant decision within the FLSA arena that will surely change the strategy of many employers facing potential collective action claims.

For the three hundred or so of our readers who attended our HR Law & Solutions Seminar last month at the Sanibel Harbour Resort, you may recall a case Bob Shearman briefed in the case law update portion of our seminar, Genesis HealthCare Corp. v. Symczyk. The case was in the “on the horizon” portion of our presentation, as it was on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court and oral argument had occurred in December 2012, but no decision had yet been rendered. That decision is now in, and it’s a rare breath of fresh air to employers, who do not very often hear “good news” and “FLSA” in the same sentence.

Case BackgroundContinue Reading A Monumental Win for Employers in Latest FLSA Decision

The Department of Labor recently issued a fact sheet on the break time requirement nursing mothers, which I discussed in a previous post.  As a brief review, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act included a provision amending the Fair Labor Standards Act to require employers to

"provide reasonable break time for an employee to express breast

…

As part of the recently enacted Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“PPACA”), the Fair Labor Standards Act has been amended to require breaks for nursing mothers.  Effective immediately, employers must now provide “reasonable” breaks for nursing mothers to breastfeed or express breast milk.  The amendment does not define “reasonable,” nor does it specify the…

The Employment Law Practice Group is pleased to provide the February 2010 edition of the Employment Law Update, which features the following articles:

  • Did you know that Florida ranks second only to California in the number of wage and hour suits brought against employers?  Robert Shearman provides employers with a timely update and advice

…