Wage Wars Workers—from truck drivers to stockbrokers—are winning huge overtime lawsuits

[billyoc]

There's a place in Reno, Nev., that practically mints money. It's not one of the many casinos in town. Nor is it one of the legal brothels that operate in the area. It is a law firm, located in a wing of a private home nestled in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. From a utilitarian office, with a view of horses grazing in a neighbor's paddock across the road, attorney Mark R. Thierman pursues a practice that in recent years has won his clients hundreds of millions of dollars from some of the biggest names in Corporate America—and produced tens of millions for himself.


A Harvard Law School grad, Thierman, 56, spent the first 20 years of his career as a management-side labor attorney and self-described union buster. He has been pelted with eggs by construction workers and his tires have been slashed by longshoremen. But in the mid-1990s he brought a series of cases on behalf of workers in California and established himself as a trailblazer in what had long been a sleepy, neglected area of the law. Thierman sues companies for violating "wage and hour" rules, typically claiming they have failed to pay overtime to workers who deserve it. Since the beginning of this decade, this litigation has exploded nationwide. Because wage and hour laws have been so widely violated, undetonated legal mines remain buried in countless companies, according to defense and plaintiffs' lawyers alike.

No one tracks precise figures, but lawyers on both sides estimate that over the last few years companies have collectively paid out more than $1 billion annually to resolve these claims, which are usually brought on behalf of large groups of employees. What's more, companies can get hit again and again with suits on behalf of different groups of workers or for alleged violations of different provisions of a complex tapestry of laws. Framed on the wall of Thierman's office, for example, is a copy of a check from a case he settled for $18 million in 2003 on behalf of Starbucks (SBUX ) store managers in California. But the coffee chain is currently defending overtime lawsuits, filed by other attorneys, in Florida and Texas. Wal-Mart Stores (WMT )is swamped with about 80 wage and hour suits, and in the past two years has seen juries award $172 million to workers in California and $78.5 million in Pennsylvania.

"This is the biggest problem for companies out there in the employment area by far," says J. Nelson Thomas, a Rochester (N.Y.) attorney, who, like Thierman, switched from defense to plaintiffs' work. "I can hit a company with a hundred sexual harassment lawsuits, and it will not inflict anywhere near the damage that will." Steven B. Hantler, an assistant general counsel at Chrysler, says plaintiffs' lawyers are "trying to make all employees subject to overtime. It's subverting the free enterprise system."

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_40/b4052001.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_top+story

Happy Friday! :woohoo:

[nuxvomica]

1. Productivity improvements are extremely inflated, IMHO

I've always suspected that a good part of the worker productivity increases over the past decade have been due to unpaid overtime. It's important to remember that real productivity is not completing more work in a shorter calendar period but rather completing more work in fewer hours. I see folks working longer hours nowadays and with less expectation of getting extra pay or comp time for it. People who are worried about keeping their jobs in this costly and uncaring world are less likely to cause a fuss over it so what these lawyers are doing is a godsend.

[Craftsman]

2. I work for a company that did away with comp time, it just disappeared

We were salaried with comp time and sick days, a meeting was called we were made hourly oru sick tim disappeared and the comp time vanished. I lost 2 hours of comp time but 17 sick days with no compensation for it.

[nuxvomica]

3. A similar thing happened to me with vacation time

The company changed from a system where vacation time is accrued during the previous year to one where it's accrued during the current year. So if I use vacation time that hasn't been accrued yet and I leave the company for any reason I owe them that vacation time even though at the time of the switch they essentially took away four weeks of my accrual. I questioned HR at the time and they said it was legal.

[Craftsman]

4. I do not think it is. Vacation time is differnent from sick time

It is if I am not mistaken looked on as deferred wages.