Posts Tagged ‘ Employment ’

In Charlton MA, A Case for Suing Your Current Employer?

July 9th, 2010. By Hunter West

In 2003 Curt Meskus had a long-standing commitment to the Charlton Fire Department as a call firefighter. At any time of the day or night he could be called in to help fight a fire, or help manage some other emergency the fire department might respond to. He would be paid an hourly rate by the fire department, a service provided by the municipality.

Then, seven years ago, Meskus was hired as the Building Commissioner for that same municipality. The latter would be a full-time job v. the on-call, as-needed structure of his fire department gig that he intended to keep.

Why not do both? Months could go by without a whiff of smoke. If he was, indeed called out during regular hours of his building commissioner job, he could always make up the lost time after hours.

Some may say Meskus has initiative. Others might call him greedy—you know, double-dipping*. But no one could argue Meskus’ status as an honest citizen who is completely above-board. When he was hired by the municipal selectmen for the building commissioner job in 2003, Meskus was up-front about his firefighting responsibilities, which he had no intention of abandoning. In fact, Meskus was the assistant call fire chief.

The municipality didn’t appear to have a problem. In fact, Meskus has been re-appointed to the position of Building Commissioner every year since by the municipal selectmen in Charlton, MA, without hesitation or debate.

Then someone complained. Another municipal employee questioned if the arrangement Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Charlton MA, Curt Meskus, Employment, FLSA
Posted in Emerging Issues, Employment | 4 Comments »

Medical Marijuana Catch-22: You’re Fired

March 24th, 2010. By AbiK

How in hell do the fourteen states where it’s legal—yes, LEGAL—to use marijuana for medical reasons have such a progressive law that, on the flip side, opens the door for employers to fire medical marijuana card-carrying employees who test positive for marijuana use?

According to a cnn.com article, Keith Stroup, who’s on the legal counsel team for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, says he gets around “300 emails and phone calls a year from medical marijuana who have been fired or had job offers rescinded because of a failed drug test.” 

Stroup goes on to say, “Usually they talk about how they have lost their job and I tell them there’s not a thing they can do about it.”

True, in most at-will employment states an employee can be fired for any reason—except for those reasons that put the employee in a federally protected class—such as race, gender, and religion.

But medical marijuana-use employees are not a federally protected class. So employers pretty much Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Discrimination, Employment, Labor Law, Marijuana, Medical Marijuana
Posted in Discrimination, Drugs/Medical, Emerging Issues, Employment | 8 Comments »

US Open Food Servers Serve up Double Fault Class Action

March 11th, 2010. By AbiK

For all the presentation and promotion that attempts to position tennis as a pastime of the hoi polloi, it just can’t seem to get over a bit of an elitist image. It’s not the professional players that make it so—heck, many have come from the hoi polloi themselves and have in their own way given the finger to some of the elitism (recall Agassi’s earlier days…McEnroe’s outbursts…Venus and Serena’s new fashion rules). And this year, you—yes YOU—can even register to compete for a wild card into the US Open Qualifying tournament. 

So what gives? Well, if you’re part of the army of food service folks who work the Open, you might be thinking the elitism comes from the country club set who show up at the US Open outfitted in Lacoste or Brooks Brothers toting a casual & sporty—yet appropriate!—Vera Bradley or Lily Pulitzer (LL Bean if quieter propriety’s your thing) bag as they head to their box seats at the Open. See, those food service folks actually work their tails off to serve—as the 2010 US Open site describes it—”innovative menus” that feature “superb cuisine of impeccable quality and freshness” to the social set sitting in the Luxury Suites at Arthur Ashe stadium. Yeah, you’re not seeing that fare if you’re sitting Loge. Luxury Suites, by the way, will set you back $10,000 – $63,000 for a package—hey, parking’s included, catering isn’t (that’s an $1,800 minimum).

Work their tails off? Oh, but surely they make decent money, right? Surely more than the peons working those concession stands outside on the “grounds”?

Well, according to a class action lawsuit filed on March 3rd in Brooklyn federal court, those servers may not be getting paid all that much for the hours they put in serving, as the New York Post calls them “celebrities, trust-fund kids and captains of industry”. The Post quotes one worker who’s also a plaintiff, Daniel Yahraes, as saying he worked more than 100 hours a week and was paid based on his $17 an hour pay rate—no overtime pay (that’s fault #1)—and, while clients were apparently charged an additional 21 percent “service charge”, that fee was not passed along to the “service” (that’s fault #2, and shades of Cipriani?). I have to imagine that some of those workers received cash tips, but still, overtime is overtime and for Yahraes, that would arguably mean he lost out on quite a bit of cash.

Five companies are named in the lawsuit, including Restaurant Associates and the suit covers the past six years.

Tags: Employment, New York, restaurant, Unpaid Overtime, US Open
Posted in Emerging Issues, Employment | No Comments »

2009 – That’s a Wrap!

December 29th, 2009. By LucyC

Well, it’s been a busy year for lawyers—and class actions were certainly popular. Employment class actions, comprised of allegations of unpaid overtime and wages and violations of the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) were among the most commonly filed lawsuits. Seems there’s no shortage of companies willing to fiddle the math. Even the biggies—Costco, McDonalds, AT&T, Marriott, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, UPS, Starbucks, Dominos Pizza—even Hooters! And I could go on. 

Other hot topics in 2009, included Chinese Drywall.

Who in this part of the world (and presumably China) has not heard of Chinese Drywall by now? Estimates suggest that possibly 100,000 people are affected by this toxic home building product, and on December 9, a federal class action was filed against Knauf Plasterboard Tainjin Co. Ltd. (KPT), one of the primary manufacturers implicated in the debacle. 

Overdraft fees were also a topic close to many peoples’ hearts in 2009. Bank Atlantic was one institution hit with a class action for allegedly manipulating the posting dates of consumer debit card and check transactions so they could make more money on customers’ overdraft fees. 

And speaking of fees, the issuers of prepaid debit cards also had their toes to the fire this year, among them Green Dot Visa for allegedly charging high fees on their ‘prepaid debit cards.’ 

Unfortunately, asbestos mesothelioma lawsuits—individual lawsuits not class actions—remained prominent this year. As more retirees are only now being diagnosed with the asbestos-related Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Asbestos, Asbestos Mesothelioma, chinese drywall, Class Action, Drugs, Employment, Settlement
Posted in Class Action, Settlement | No Comments »

Employers Warned that Workers Might Bail Next Year

December 9th, 2009. By janem

If some employers gaze into their crystal balls about now, they might want to start treating their workers better because 60 percent of employees intend to pursue new job opportunities now that the economic downturn is on an upswing.

According to a survey by Right Management Inc. that polled 904 North American workers, 21 percent said they “might” look for a new job and another 6 percent said a career move is unlikely, but they’ve updated their resumes anyway. So that leaves only 13 percent who intend to stay where they are. “Employees are clearly expressing their pent-up frustration with how they have been treated through the downturn,” said Right Management president Douglas Matthews.

Given those statistics, it’s gonna be interesting to see how many employees will stay loyal to a company that laid them off or basically took advantage of the economic climate to not pay overtime and other benefits.

Right Management also surveyed over 1,000 US employers and discovered that 9 out of 10 companies are willing to rehire former workers, mainly because they are “familiar with the jobs and the organizational culture”.

Maybe rogue employers should start paying overtime compensation. And they might have to dangle a pretty big carrot to get their former employees back…

Tags: Employment
Posted in Employment | No Comments »