Shanti Atkins of the Compliance Training Blog has an interesting blog post about the crippling trend of wage and hour litigation. The post references a recent BusinessWeek article discussing how plaintiffs’ employment lawyers are "printing" money with wage and hour cases. One of the plaintiff’s lawyers is quoted as saying,
"I can hit a company with a hundred sexual harassment lawsuits, and it will not inflict anywhere near the damage that [a wage and hour suit] will."
In my experience, wage and hour issues are often misunderstood by employers. Employers tend to run into problems when they ignore overtime regulations. If you have questions I suggest checking out this handy reference guide to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and consulting your employment lawyer. You might also consider a wage and hour review to avoid misclassification of employees.