Wage and Hour Class Actions are Booming
I've said it before (and also here) but it bears repeating that wage and hour class actions are booming. Just this past week Iowa's Casey's General Stores was hit with a wage and hour lawsuit with allegedly more than $5 million at stake. If that isn't enough to convince you to examine whether your company has vulnerabilities you better read this informative blog post from Mark Toth of Manpower.
The 4th Annual Workplace Class Action report from Seyfarth Shaw shows the volume of wage and hour class action continues to grow exponentially. As the report's editor says, “identifying, addressing, and remediating class action vulnerabilities” should be at the top of every employer’s list of 2008 priorities.
Rush:
The WalMart case in Pennsylvania is an excellent example of the incentive for a Plaintiffs' attorney to take on a class action. It was an off the clock work case under state law that combine Pennsylvania's Wage Payment Law with a Wage & Hour claim. While each employee apparently recovered an average of $750, the attorneys fees and costs were $36.5 million.
Michael,
Thanks for the example. Some of the awards in these wage and hour class actions are out of this world. I think we have only seen the beginning of this. Many employers either do not understand, or choose to ignore, the wage and hour regulations.
Rush