Please read this excerpt from an article from the Society of Human
Resource Management newsletter. It is widely believed that the audits
and lawsuits will continue to rise in the coming year with very substantial
payouts and legal fees.
By
Joanne Deschenaux
SHRM’s Senior Legal Editor
1/21/09 4:46 PM
The
last few years have seen an explosion in class action litigation
involving workplace issues, and the present economic downturn is
likely to fuel even more lawsuits, according to Seyfarth
Shaw’s 2009
Annual Class Action Litigation Report.
The
most significant growth in wage and hour litigation in 2008 centered
at the state court level, Jerry Maatman, a Seyfarth Shaw attorney
in Chicago who co-chairs the firm’s complex litigation group, told SHRM Online in
a Jan. 15 interview. “Plaintiffs’ attorneys can stretch these
cases, make them bigger, make them worth more in state court forums,” said
Maatman, who edited the annual report.
This growth in state litigation has been concentrated in California,
Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania
and Texas, a trend that is likely to continue in 2009, the report notes.
While
some large employers have become more compliant, “what
we are seeing daily is class actions being brought against restaurants,
lawn care services, museums, small- and medium-sized employers that
have been caught in the intricacies of state and federal law. The plaintiffs’ bar
has not yet run out of litigation targets.”
IF
you do not have compliant job descriptions for every position
in your company and the proper “Hotline” channels
established, please call Fern Powers at 215-563-5520. We are
experts at developing compliant job descriptions, used by Wage
and Hour audits, to determine if employees are correctly classified.
An employment and labor attorney approve all of our well-written
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