The best defense for employers confronted with claims of “off-the-clock”, (i.e., unrecorded) work under the FLSA are accurate contemporaneous time records created by employees based on clearly communicated time keeping practices. The effectiveness of such records was recently demonstrated in Roberts v. Advocate Health Care, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 103631 (N.D.
hospital
Pennsylvania Judge Rejects Contract Claim for Meal Period Pay
By Noel P. Tripp on
Hospitals and other medical service providers continue to face waves of wage-and-hour claims concerning meal break practices, with non-exempt care providers alleging that they were unable to take unpaid meal periods, or that those meal periods were otherwise compensable. A new decision from Judge Jeffrey L. Schmehl of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania rejects…
Fifth Circuit Affirms FLSA Summary Judgment Based On “Complete Lack Of Evidence” Of Off-the-Clock Work
By Noel P. Tripp on
Posted in Hours of Work, Recordkeeping
Last week, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the holding of a Texas district court that “an unsubstantiated and speculative estimate of uncompensated overtime does not constitute evidence sufficient to show the amount and extent of that work as a matter of just and reasonable inference.” Ihegword v. Harris County …
Pennsylvania Law Amended to Comport to FLSA’s 8/80 Overtime Rule For Healthcare Industry Employers
By Noel P. Tripp & Stephanie J. Peet on
Posted in Pennsylvania
In a positive development for Pennsylvania healthcare employers, on July 5, 2012, Governor Corbett signed into state law an amendment to the Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act (“PMWA”), allowing hospitals and other healthcare employers in Pennsylvania to utilize the “8/80” overtime rule established by the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) See 29 U.S.C. § 203(j). …
Courts Decertify Collective Actions Based On Auto-Deduct Claims, Citing Individualized Issues
By Noel P. Tripp on
Posted in Hours of Work
As we have repeatedly discussed, use of a so-called “auto-deduct”, wherein a predetermined amount of time is automatically deducted from an employee’s hours of work to correspond to a meal period with the understanding that the employee will perform no work during that period, can give rise to individual or class claims that an…
Detroit Federal Court Rejects Employee’s Attempt To Seek Recovery Based on Auto-Deducted Meal Break
By Noel P. Tripp on
Posted in Hours of Work
In this post, we discussed two different courts’ analyses of hospital plaintiffs’ attempts to seek conditional certification of their claims that they were not paid for allegedly working meal periods due to the employers’ use of an auto-deduct for meal periods. In an opinion addressing such a claim on the merits (as opposed to the…