Not every obnoxious workplace behavior is unlawful harassment. To violate federal law, the harassment has to be unwelcome, based on a "protected category" (for example, sex or race), and "severe or pervasive."

But most employers aren't satisfied with banning only "illegal" behavior, and rightfully not. The law does a fairly good job of keeping us from each other's ...

Overtime rule - what's the Trump Administration doing? Last Friday, I posted about the U.S. Department of Labor's brief in the case challenging the Obama Administration's overtime rule, which has been enjoined since November 2016. The Trump DOL position had me scratching my head because it sounded an awful lot like the Obama DOL position, and I said that we'd be hearing soon from some ...

Can an outside attorney defending an employer in a lawsuit under the Fair Labor Standards Act be liable for retaliation against the plaintiff-employee based on litigation tactics? One court answered that question "yes" last week.

Are these judges crazy? You decide.

In Arias v. Raimondo, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed dismissal of ...

The U.S. Department of Labor submitted its brief today in Nevada v. U.S. Department of Labor, the case involving the challenge to the Obama Administration's overtime rule.

Some very quick background: The overtime rule, which would have more than doubled the salary threshold for administrative, executive, and some professional exemptions from the minimum wage and overtime ...

We officially entered the season of summer this week. What are the most common ways employers can get burned? I can think of four right off the bat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qtbhrq8JyBw

(In the 1960s, melanoma was cool.)

Sexist air conditioning. It seems like a long time since we've read anything about this employment law "issue." The idea was that office air conditioning ...

On November 23, 2016, we issued a Client Bulletin titled “Employers Can Breathe A Sigh of Relief Come December 1: Court strikes down overtime rule.”  But a new lawsuit in federal court in New Jersey puts a gulp in that sigh of relief.

Background

As previously reported, regulations that would have more than doubled the salary threshold for Administrative, Executive and ...

My law partner Heather Owen of our Jacksonville Office is back this week at FOCUS, our women's leadership blog, with the third and final part of her series on "How the FLSA hurts women." Her post this week provides specific examples of scenarios in which the relatively rigid requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act make work difficult for women who are trying to balance their ...

Last week, I wrote about a study describing how certain timekeeping systems could create wage and hour liability through, among other things, making it easy to "cheat" and providing no transparency when changes are made. (Which makes it impossible to detect and correct errors.) Having addressed the "problem" last week, I wanted to talk this week about solutions.

But before I do ...

ConstangyTV's Close-Up on Workplace Law, April edition, is out! Host Leigh Tyson interviews John MacDonald, head of our Princeton (NJ) Office, about employment law issues unique to the financial and investment industries. If you haven't already subscribed to our monthly video series, please do so. And, to save you the trouble of trekking all that way over to YouTube, here is the video:

Does your timekeeping software make it harder for you to comply with wage and hour laws -- and to defend yourself in a wage and hour lawsuit?

A study recently published in the Yale Journal of Law and Technology says that there are features of certain timekeeping programs that can create wage and hour problems for employers, and result in underpayment* of employees.

*Underpayment is ...