Category: Employment Litigation

In a post last week we discussed the Fair Labor Standards Act and how it affects employees across the nation, especially in the area of fair compensation for work done. According to the federal law, all nonexempt employees must be paid overtime pay for time worked past 40 hours in a work week. But as some of…

What a UC Berkeley honors graduate who came back to her alma mater last summer to work with a described “world-renowned professor of philosophy” as his assistant prior to embarking on a graduate program reasonably expected was s singular opportunity to grow in her chosen field. What she nearly immediately experienced instead, as related in…

Say that you’re an “exempt” worker toiling diligently on behalf of a California employer. Although that classification is not readily susceptible of a quick and easy definition, it broadly applies to certain categories of salaried — rather than paid-by-the-hour — workers. One straightforward and representative take on exempt employee status is supplied in an online primer noting…

We hope that there are several instructive takeaways concerning employment law on our website at the Southern California business law firm of Larson & Gaston. We suspect that one thing central to the realm that likely jumps out from our narrative is employment law’s sheer complexity. The on-the-job interaction between employers and workers encompasses wide-ranging matters.…

In 1945, Congress passed a law declaring the first week in October as “National Employ the Physically Handicapped Week.” It was later expanded to include the entire month and the name was changed to National Disability Employment Awareness Month. The national campaign is designed to improve awareness about the employment issues facing people with disabilities.…

A recent Bloomberg article terms it an “imbroglio.” Other depictions might be apt, too, of course, including this one: public relations disaster. It hasn’t been the sweetest August thus far for tech giant Google, which, rather than currently being in the news for mainstream articles on business performance and related information is instead embroiled in…

While most people would like to think that they have the ability to remain at a job as long as they like and leave whenever something better comes along, this is actually not the reality for many. Though some people have agreements with their employer that provide them some protections from termination, the presumption is…

What one national media outlet refers to as Uber’s “freelance labor model” generally works quite well for the company, obviously, given the online transportation entity’s estimated worth of as much as $68 billion. At its core, that model regards company workers — that is, the hundreds of thousands of Uber drivers — as independent contractors.…

Since the introduction of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Americans enjoy a lot more protections in the workplace — more specifically, protection from discrimination based on age, sex, race, skin color and national origin. But even with this federal law in place, some employers and employees still participate in discriminatory behavior…

In what has been called potentially “the first shareholder proposal calling for a company to rethink its policy on paid family leave,” Starbucks is being pressured to publicly address a glaring gap that exists regarding a key employee benefit. Namely, that is time off for a worker following the birth of a child. Starbucks’ family leave…

Sexual harassment is having a moment in the news right now – and it’s not a good one. While the victims are getting a chance to share their stories without shame, it shows a much larger issue within the workplace in the entertainment industry. This problem doesn’t start and stop with the film and TV…

When news first broke four years ago on the suspension of a Fox News broadcaster for using the N-word during a staff meeting, there were immediately two opposing sides to the issue: One side claimed that the anchor had actively participated in discrimination against his coworkers by saying the word and that his suspension and…