Category: Employment Law

Philadelphia Overtime Lawyers Discuss: Cleaning Company Sued for Violating FLSA

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The owner of Heits Building Services of Central and Northern New Jersey is facing a federal lawsuit for violating labor laws at the expense of the company’s workers. Giuseppe Grammatico has been accused of selling “franchises” to individuals, then treating them like employees instead of independent contractors.

According to the lawsuit, Grammatico heads Grammatico Enterprises Inc. which provides cleaning services through Heits Building Services for customers around New Jersey. He has been charging workers $8,250 to acquire their own cleaning franchise and clean for his clients. However, rather than being treated as independent franchise owners, all monies and contracts were handled by Grammatico.

As pled in the lawsuit, Heits Building Services assigned contracts to franchise owners, collected payments from clients and paid workers their wages after taking a percentage for “management fees.” Workers were prohibited from contacting new clients and were also required to use cleaning products purchased from Heits. The suit also claims that workers did not receive overtime pay.

The lawsuit accuses Grammatico of implementing this particular business model to avoid paying fair wages and overtime. Grammatico denies this claim and purports that many other businesses classify franchises the same way. Moreover, the defendant asserts that his business model benefits franchise owners by providing them with the necessary training and support they need to be successful.

The Labor Department disagrees. In recent years, both federal and regional authorities such as New Jersey’s Wage and Hour Labor Division have grown increasingly aware of the uptrend in what is known as employee misclassification. The independent contractor misclassification is one of the most increasingly common type of labor violations. Employee misclassification deprives workers of wages and benefits and contributes to an unfair business advantage for companies that misclassify workers. If the Labor Department wins the lawsuit against Grammatico, affected workers should recover back wages for unpaid overtime and unpaid Social Security contributions.

Philadelphia Overtime Lawyers at Sidkoff, Pincus & Green Represent Employees in Fair Labor Violation Lawsuits

Our team of Philadelphia overtime lawyers at Sidkoff, Pincus & Green have represented employees in FLSA claims for unpaid overtime. Please call 215-574-0600 or contact us online today to schedule your consultation.  

Philadelphia Business Lawyers: Conditional Class Certification for Collective Actions

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Getting a conditional class certified in court requires the plaintiff to show by a preponderance of the evidence that the rest of the opt-in plaintiffs were “similarly situated.” In Jarosz v. St. Mary Med. Ctr., PICS Case No. 14-1560 (E.D. Pa. Sept. 22, 2014), an employee claimed she was never properly compensated for performing work during her meal break, and that this was a policy throughout her work. The court decertified the potential class because the circumstances showed this meal break policy was not centralized. Factors such as employees from other departments and positions, as well as the fact that meal breaks were scheduled differently depending on the department, aided the court in reaching its decision.

This court’s decision is important to show that just being employed by the same employer is not enough for additional plaintiffs to opt-in to a class action (collective action) suit. The “similarly situated” standard is focus in this court’s holding. The certification of a class action becomes inappropriate when individual issues would overcome issues that the class as a whole would have.

Philadelphia Employment Lawyers at Sidkoff, Pincus and Green are Experienced in All Areas of Business Litigation including Class Action Lawsuits

Philadelphia Business Lawyers at Sidkoff, Pincus and Green represent clients in all areas of Employment Law, and handle class action lawsuits.  For more information contact us online, or call 215-574-0600.

Philadelphia Employment Lawyers: Fair Labor Standards Act, Unpaid Wages, Class Action/Collective

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Employees should be paid for all the work performed by them for their employer. The Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) requires employers to pay employees for all hours worked. In addition, the FLSA requires compensation at a rate of at least 1.5 times an employee’s regular rate of pay, whenever that employee has worked over 40 hours in one workweek. Under the FLSA, employers must keep wage and hour records. As long as employees meet the requirements to be covered, FLSA gives employees a cause of action when they have been improperly paid for their performance. When an employer violates the FLSA and has employees and has locations in multiple states, employees in similar situations may bring a collective action. Normally these claims arise from overtime work that is unpaid, but in the following case, the claim arises from unpaid work performed before work.

In a recent case, plaintiffs were granted conditional certification of their collective action for a policy that required them to perform pre-shift work without any compensation. Tompkins v. Farmers Ins. Exch., PICS Case No. 15-1390 (E.D. Pa. Aug. 18, 2015). The court held that the employees satisfied their burden to show employees in 49 states were performing unpaid pre-shift work and did not have to show there was any written policy or procedure by the employer. The court further discussed that certification of a collective action is a two-tier process. The first-step is being able to show the proposed employee group can be determined similarly situated, to allow discovery on the issue. Once discovery is complete, the second-step by the court is to decide if the employee group is in fact similarly situated.

The Philadelphia Wage and Hour Lawyers at Sidkoff, Pincus & Green Represent Workers Who Have Not Received Proper Overtime Compensation

The Philadelphia Employment Lawyers at Sidkoff, Pincus & Green help those who have been inadequately paid for their overtime work, we handle class action lawsuits.  For more information contact us online, or call 215-574-0600 to schedule a consultation.

Philadelphia Wage and Hour Lawyers Discuss Lawsuit Filed Against Movie Company for Minimum Wage Violations

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A Montgomery County resident and former employee of Movie Tavern Partners filed a class action lawsuit against the company citing minimum wage violations. The ex-employee filed for herself and on behalf of other employees who were treated similarly. The lawsuit cites violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and the Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act.

According to details of the complaint, the plaintiff worked as a runner for the company’s Collegeville location from March to August of 2014. The suit says that because the company applied a tip credit against their wages, they were not paid the mandated minimum wage for the hours they worked.

The law states that an employer may pay its employees less than minimum wage if the customer tips combined with the tip credit wage equals at least minimum wage. The employer must also make the employees aware of its intention to pay a tip credit wage so that the employees are aware of what their salary will be. According to the lawsuit, the company did not notify its employees, and they only paid the tip credit wage.

The class action lawsuit seeks unpaid wages, unpaid overtime, liquidated damages, attorney fees, court costs and other costs that the court deems appropriate.

Philadelphia wage and hour lawyers at Sidkoff, Pincus & Green, P.C. provide experienced, dedicated legal counsel for employees experiencing wage and hour issues and violations of the FLSA by their employer. For more information, call our Philadelphia FLSA lawyers at 215-574-0600 or contact us online.

Philadelphia Employment Lawyers: Executive Order to Provide Sick Leave for Federal Contractors

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Federal contractors will soon be entitled to paid sick leave, including paid leave for family care. President Obama recently signed an executive order that will guarantee paid sick leave to approximately 300,000 employees. In an effort to attract and retain dedicated, talented employees, access to paid sick leave will provide a more comprehensive benefits package to federal contractors.

According to the executive order, employees can earn up to seven days of paid time off each year. This paid leave can be used for issues including, but not limited to a medical condition, caring for a family member, domestic violence or time needed to seek counseling or legal representation.  Individual employers may decide to provide more than seven days, but this is the minimum amount of days federal contractors must provide its employees.

For more information about how this executive order will affect your employee benefits, call Philadelphia employment lawyers at Sidkoff, Pincus & Green at 215-574-0600 or contact us online.

Philadelphia Employment Lawyers: Medical Leave

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Employers have a duty to inform workers about Medical Leave request’s deficiencies.

The Third Circuit (PA, NJ, and DE) recently ruled that Employers cannot deny a request for medical leave under FMLA if the request is not complete or insufficient to be reviewed. Instead, the employer has a duty to inform the employee their request is insufficient and give them the chance to correct it.  In Hansler v. Lehigh Valley Hosp. Network, No. 14-1772, 2015 WL 4925819 (3d Cir. Aug. 19, 2015) the Third Circuit ruled that the employee’s FMLA request was “insufficient” and she should have gotten the chance to fix the request within seven (7) days. Instead the employer simply denied the request with no further review into the request, and never gave notice to the employee until her termination for taking time off for her undiagnosed medical condition.

The regulations surrounding these type of requests never allow for a request to be incomplete, essentially meaning there is no official request by the employee until there is a completed submitted request. This ruling protects employees who are facing a potentially new and undiagnosed condition, or anyone who does not submit a completed form. This ruling offers increases employers’ duties in regards to improper leave requests.

For more information, call Philadelphia employment lawyers at Sidkoff, Pincus & Green at 215-574-0600 or contact us online.

Philadelphia Overtime Lawyers: The Fair Labor Standards Act

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The Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) was enacted in 1938 in an effort to regulate the work environment.  The FLSA requires employers to pay employees for all hours worked.  Additionally, if an employee works in excess of forty hours in a workweek, the FLSA requires the employer to pay the employee a rate of at least one and a half times the employee’s regular rate of pay.  However, the FLSA does not apply to all employees; some employees are exempt.  Many states, including Pennsylvania, have laws which parallel the FLSA.

In order to calculate the correct amount of hours an employee worked, it is important to determine what activities constitute “work” and when the workday starts.  This is of particular importance for employees who: work from home, travel, are required to wear protective equipment or clothing, or need to take preliminary steps so that they can perform their job. Employers who violate the FLSA can be liable for damages for unpaid overtime, liquidated damages, reasonable attorneys fees and costs, and criminal penalties.

For more information, call Philadelphia employment lawyers at Sidkoff, Pincus & Green at 215-574-0600 or contact us online.

Philadelphia Employment Lawyers: Unemployment Compensation

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Necessitous and Compelling Cause to Leave Job

In WFG National Title Insurance Co. v. Unemployment Compensation Board of Review, NO. 1268 C.D. 2014, a recent unemployment compensation (“UC”) case, the Commonwealth Court held that an employee had a “necessitous and compelling” cause to voluntarily quit his job due to a substantial and unilateral change to his pay and performance goals.

In WFG National Title Insurance Co., the employee was reassigned to a new supervisor and soon after, filed a complaint with human resources about his former supervisor. Soon after an investigation that ended with no disciplinary for the former supervisor, Employee’s new supervisor changed the way his bonuses would be calculated and set “unachievable expectations.” These changes significantly decreased Employee’s annual pay. Employee then quit his job, and filed for unemployment compensation benefits due to what he believed was retaliatory actions. In upholding the decision, the Court explains that a necessary cause to quit one’s job can exist when the employer has made an unreasonable change and that a considerable reduction in pay occurs.

It is important to note, that the court discussed how fast these actions occurred after the complaint, which signals that time is an important factor in determining if an employee has a cause of action. In WFG National Title Insurance Co., all of these actions occurred within a four (4) week time span.

For more information, call Philadelphia employment lawyers at Sidkoff, Pincus & Green at 215-574-0600 or contact us online.

Philadelphia Discrimination Lawyers: Philadelphia Ordinance Banning Discrimination

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In June, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized gay marriage across the country, following a decade of reforms that have granted more rights to LGBT individuals. However, the federal government has yet to change Title VII discrimination laws to protect LGBT employees. In lieu of federal actions, individual states and cities, including Philadelphia, have taken it upon themselves to protect LGBT workers from employment discrimination based on their gender identity and/or sexual orientation.

Philadelphia Anti-Discrimination Ordinance

Philadelphia law states that “all people are entitled to the full and equal employment opportunities without discrimination or segregation because of age, ancestry, color, disability, domestic or sexual violence victim status, ethnicity, familial status, or gender identity.” Overt discrimination, such as denial of employment, is prohibited, as are more subtle forms of discrimination such as requiring different standards for LGBT employees. Additionally, the law applies to all employers, whether they be past employers, current employers or potential employers. Employment agencies and labor unions in Philadelphia must also provide every individual with “fair and equal treatment” under the law.

Philadelphia Discrimination Lawyers at Sidkoff, Pincus & Green Represent Victims of Employment Discrimination

Individuals who believe that they have experienced employment discrimination due to gender identity or sexual orientation should consult with a Philadelphia discrimination lawyer to discuss their litigation options. A skilled discrimination lawyer can help victims understand the law and can manage their claim with the goals of facilitating justice and achieving a positive resolution. Because many laws are still changing, individuals who were discriminated against in the past may now be able to sue their former employers under current anti-discrimination laws.

At Sidkoff, Pincus & Green, our lawyers will fight hard to protect your right to fair employment opportunities. Please call 215-574-0600 or contact us online today to schedule your consultation and discuss your claim.

Philadelphia Wage and Hour Lawyers: Bob Evans Facing Overtime Claims

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Bob Evans Farms may be required to pay as much as $20 million in back overtime pay to assistant managers as the result of three wage and hour lawsuits filed against the restaurant chain.  Bob Evans assistant managers claim that the company violated the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) by forcing them to work upwards of 45-50 hours per week at a flat salary while performing the same duties as hourly employees.

In the first class-action lawsuit, filed in 2012 by David Snodgrass, a judge ruled that any overtime awarded to the plaintiffs would be paid at one and a half times an employee’s hourly rate for all time exceeding 40 hours per week.  According to Bob Evans Farms’ annual report, if the other two cases are decided in favor of the plaintiffs, the company could owe close to $20 million.  This would be a huge financial blow to Bob Evans, which lost nine million dollars last quarter and was forced to cut more than 60 headquarters positions.

The FLSA determines whether or not employees are eligible for overtime pay.  Employees in supervisory roles may be improperly classified as exempt from overtime if their managerial responsibilities are only a minimal part of their job.  Philadelphia wage and hour lawyers at the Law Offices of Sidkoff, Pincus & Green routinely represent clients in FLSA and overtime disputes.  For professional, effective legal representation in Philadelphia, submit an online contact form or call our Philadelphia business lawyers at Sidkoff, Pincus & Green at 215-574-0600.