Archive for March 31, 2020

On March 27th, Instacart workers and Gig Workers Collective, an activist non-profit, published a letter on Medium announcing plans for a nationwide strike on March 30th to protest Instacart’s refusal to provide workers “with effective protection, meaningful pay, and meaningful benefits” amidst the coronavirus pandemic.  Instacart is a grocery delivery service that has become increasingly popular over the past several weeks for people who are unwilling or unable to go outside of their homes.  Instacart’s gig workers, also known as

The widespread employment consequences of the Coronavirus are already hitting the U.S. economy. Over 3 million people filed for unemployment benefits last week. Social distancing precautions to protect public health have shut down entire sectors of American industry. This change, although essential to prevent the spread of the virus, has hit minimum wage and low wage workers particularly hard. These workers often have customer-facing roles, such as in the restaurant, retail, cosmetology, and hospitality industries. In addition to filing for

The coronavirus pandemic has drastically escalated in the past few weeks. Schools, universities, restaurants, gyms, retail stores, and other workplaces have closed in order to prevent further spreading of the virus. Although these measures are important to protect public health, they have also resulted in many workers being laid off. For certain workers who cannot work from home, like servers, janitors, and retail workers, this epidemic has put their jobs (and paychecks) on hold. If you have been laid off

With the coronavirus pandemic spreading throughout the United States, employers are tackling a range of employee issues. Of course, the top priority for any employer should be employee safety. However, this pandemic suggests that many company sick-leave policies are inadequate, particularly for low-wage employees. As the Center for Disease Control has recommended, anyone with Coronavirus should stay home from work in order to prevent infecting others. Yet, many employees live paycheck to paycheck and cannot afford to miss work. Many

The Law Office of Christopher Q. Davis recently won a decision on the certification of wage claims for sushi restaurant workers in Brooklyn, New York. Firm partners Christopher Davis and Rachell Haskell advocated for former servers at Mitoushi Sushi. Davis and Haskell successfully argued that Mitoushi did not pay workers minimum wage and overtime pay as required by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).  Therefore, the Court decided that “Plaintiffs’ motion for conditional certification as a FLSA collective action, and

Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Twitter have announced that they will continue to pay their hourly workers normal wages despite the fact that many staff members are encouraged to telecommute. As the coronavirus pandemic spreads, telecommute work is seen as a precaution to protect employees from infection. With many salaried employees working from home, these companies don’t have the same need for on-site hourly workers. On-site hourly workers do a wide range of office support tasks, such as cooking meals, office

In the wake of coronavirus, some businesses have provided paid-time-off for infected employees, quarantined employees, or employees with sick family members, while others have not.  Workers at Whole Foods were outraged when they received a message from the company’s CEO, John Mackey, earlier this week asking healthy employees to “donate” their accumulated paid days off to sick employees.  Mackey wrote, “team members who have a medical emergency or death in the immediate family can receive donated PTO hours, not only

France’s Court of Cassation, the country’s highest court of law, recently ruled that Uber should have classified a former Uber driver as an employee rather than a self-employed worker.  The ruling is the latest in a series of lawsuits against Uber for improperly treating drivers as independent contractors to save money. Other ride-sharing drivers may use the case as precedent to demand employee classification because independent contractors aren’t given the same benefits such as minimum wage, overtime, insurance, and more. 

The

Judge Woods of the U.S. District Court Southern District of New York recently granted our firm’s motion. Our firm moved to invalidate deceptive arbitration agreements on behalf of IT workers in a class-action lawsuit. The Court found that the IT employer’s new arbitration policy was instituted in bad faith. IT workers were required to sign the arbitration agreement in order to keep their jobs, essentially giving them no choice but to sign away their rights in court. Because the IT