Archive for June 25, 2015

Two recent settlements involving company delivery drivers have called attention to potential injustices faced by drivers, truckers, and other personnel who deliver products on behalf of businesses.

On June 11, a New York federal court filing disclosed that Fresh Direct LLC will pay more than $1.2 million to current and former delivery drivers employed by the grocery company. The settlement is in response to a class action lawsuit that claims that the company withheld $23 million in wages and gratuity. The

Last week, the California Labor Commission delivered a ruling that will undoubtedly have long-ranging consequences for the platform-driven tech company and its contemporaries.

San Francisco-based Barbara Berwick filed a claim against Uber after a stint working as a driver for the company, requesting compensation for outstanding wages and expenses incurred over a two-month period in 2014. Berwick argued that as an Uber driver, she had worked the equivalent of full workdays and was entitled to overtime pay. Uber, adhering to company

On Monday, June 8, the Supreme Court granted review in a case that may significantly impact the standards for class certification. The case, Tyson Foods, Inc. v. Bouaphakeo, is one of four recent cases in which the Court has been asked to decide whether a class may be certified through the use of statistics when there are individualized differences among class members and when many members have not been injured.

The Tyson case involves employees at a pork-processing plant who claim

On Friday, June 5, a California federal judge announced that after 14 years of litigation, a prominent gender discrimination suit against Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. will go to trial. Betty Dukes, the lead plaintiff in the formerly large class action, is a past Wal-Mart greeter who alleges that she observed widespread gender bias during her time as an employee. U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer preserved several of Dukes’ allegations, along with those of four other women, including the claim that

Last week, one of our blog articles covered the risk of worker misclassification in tech start-ups like Uber and Airbnb. According to recent articles from Think Progress and New York Magazine, however, a much older profession is also consistently subject to worker misclassification and consequent employee abuse: the hairstyling industry.

Only 10% of hair salons rely on direct employees, which means that the other 90% are either privately owned by individuals or hire independent contractors. Journalist Bryce Covert at Think Progress reports

On Wednesday, June 3, four former CVS employees filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court in Manhattan, claiming that staff in CVS stores throughout New York City discriminated against African-American and Hispanic customers, profiling them and referring to them with slurs and racial epithets. The plaintiffs are suing the national pharmacy chain itself, as well as some of its managers, for reportedly directing the workers to keep an eye on certain customers under racially-motivated suspicion of larceny, ordering them, among

A recently announced class action lawsuit against Victoria’s Secret in California brings to light national concerns about “call-in” work schedules. The suit coincides with an investigation into on-call scheduling in New York by the state attorney general’s office.

Employees who are assigned call-in shifts are not guaranteed any work or pay for that particular day—rather, they are forced to remain available for hours before their shift, and call in to work well in advance to see whether the company needs them

On Tuesday, June 4, U.S. District Chief Judge K. Michael Moore conditionally certified two classes of Burger King Corp. employees who have accused the chain of misclassifying employees in order to exempt them from overtime pay and therefore save on labor costs. Plaintiff Ronald Joseph Torres Roman, at this stage in the litigation process, has shown that there are sufficient similarities in the treatment and situation of other trainee coaches and sales and operation coaches who have joined the suit.

Torres

Natavia Lowery already had a record of identity theft and embezzlement when she stole $30,000 from her boss Linda Stein and clubbed her to death with a piece of exercise equipment. There were no warning signs of her criminal record or personal history before she was hired by Douglas Elliman, Stein’s real estate company. Lowery was previously accused of stealing $3,000 while working at a Virginia church and had several arrest warrants. She was eventually convicted of second-degree