Congratulations to our Associate Attorney Crystal Yagoobian and Partner Shawn Khorrami, published in this months' issue of The Advocate, Employment & Labor Law Issue..jpg)
Their article, "Maintaining your Wage-and-Hour Class Action in State Court" can be found on page 22.
Food & Drug Safety:
- Avandia New Labeling & Warnings
- An Update on the Fosamax Lawsuits, Article by Thomas Sands
- Nutella sued for Misleading Health Claims, article by Greg Cragg
- Anti-Energy Drink are Hard for Critics to Swallow, article by Abi Gnanadesigan
Fair Employment:
- Calif. Bill Aims to Increase Liquidated damages for Unpaid Wages, article by Bevin Allen
- Toshiba becomes latest US Employer to Face Class Discrimination Suit, article by Brandon Brouillette
For decades, wage and hour attorneys have relied on DOL Opinion Letters as a means for interpreting and applying the FLSA. In the past, requests for opinion letters could be submitted and would receive responses that analyzed the particular facts of any given situation. This practice is now a thing of the past, and wage and hour attorneys can no longer rely on these opinion letters to the degree they once did for the specific situations arising in their cases.
The DOL has not issued an opinion letter with regard to the FLSA since early last year. At the time the last opinion letter was issued, the DOL also withdrew several of its previous opinion letters for what it described as further consideration. The DOL has since determined that it will not issue wage and hour opinion letters in the manner it has in the past, and will instead issue more broad Administrative Interpretations.
The Wage and Hour Division made this transition because it believes that issuing Administrative Interpretations is a more efficient way to provide guidance that is applicable to an entire group of employees or to an industry as a whole.
What does this mean for wage and hour attorneys? Requests for opinion letters can still be submitted to the DOL, but the resulting Interpretations will only reference the applicable statutes, regulations and cases, and will not give fact based analyses. The first Administrative Interpretation was issued on March 24, 2010 with regard to exempt versus non exempt status of the Mortgage Loan Officer position under the administrative exemption. The Administrative Interpretation held that Mortgage Loan Officers are non exempt employees under the FLSA because their primary duty is the sale of financial products, and not related to the management or business operations of their employers. Interestingly, this opinion is contrary to an opinion letter issued by the DOL In 2006.
It is yet to be determined how useful and effective the DOL Administrative Interpretations will be because it is unclear how often they will be issued.
Enter keywords:
