Breakfast Briefing: Wage & Hour Update

Wage and hour cases continue to be a source of potential liability for employers.  Indeed, the vast majority of class and collective actions filed in state and federal courts continue to be wage-hour cases.  Additionally, the Department of Labor has hired more investigators and continues to aggressively investigate employers’ wage-hour practices.  Companies hit with these cases may face significant exposure and, even if their policies are lawful, can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more, defending a class or collective action.  As a result, it is critical for a company facing a lawsuit to quickly assess its risks and determine its litigation goals.

Even if not currently facing a lawsuit, a company should take measures to avoid litigation and to minimize its legal risks.  To do so, companies need to keep abreast of changes in the law and litigation trends.  Wage-hour law continues to develop and change, and these developments may impact your organization or industry.  For example, this year the Supreme Court in Christopher v. SmithKline held that the Fair Labor Standards Act’s outside sales exemption applies to pharmaceutical sales representatives.  This decision directly impacts the pharmaceutical industry.  But it also may permit companies in other industries to classify a wider variety of employees as exempt, and it may make it more difficult for the Department of Labor to impose its regulatory views on employers.

Please join Seyfarth Shaw to learn about various strategies that companies should explore when facing litigation, ways in which companies can minimize their legal risks, and how recent developments in the law shape these considerations.

During the breakfast briefing, we will discuss:

• Defining the business objective & creating a strategy aimed at
  achieving it
• A new arrow in the quiver opposing certification: applying
  Wal-Mart v. Dukes
• The expanding and contracting administrative exemption
• Before the shift, during the shift, and after the shift:
  is it compensable time?
• Effective mediation techniques & crafting an advantageous
  settlement agreement
• Can collective and class litigation be avoided by arbitration after
  Concepcion and D.R. Horton?
• Compliance tips to protect against wage-hour litigation