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On October 13, 25, and 28, 2021, the Equal Employment Opportunity updated its workplace COVID-19 guidance. The update provided additional information about the employment implications for employers who wish to impose COVID-19 vaccine mandates and their workers.

Student workers in the Office of Admissions at Hamilton College in New York narrowly voted to be represented by an affiliate of the United Food and Commercial Workers earlier this month.

In Wagner v. Air Methods Corp., a Colorado helicopter company has settled a case on behalf of flight nurses and flight paramedics involving claims of unpaid wages in which the company wrongly masqueraded as if work time was unpaid “sleep time.”

On October 6th, 2021, MSE partner Molly Elkin argued before the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in the appeal of Adams v. United States which concerns the issue of the entitlement to hazardous duty pay for correctional workers who have been exposed to COVID-19 in federal prisons.

The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania declined to dismiss an employee’s allegations that her former employer terminated her employment on the same day that she disclosed a positive COVID-19 test.

Massachusetts is seeing an increase in Tips Act claims, and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court just reinforced that a lack of clarity in fee- and tip-related documentation may result in employer liability, including mandatory triple damages and attorney’s fees.

On Wednesday, September 15, 2021, the attorneys in Benson et al. v. Enterprise Leasing Company of Florida LLC, notified the trial court that they had settled the case. The Benson plaintiffs alleged that their former employer, the parent company of car rental firms including Enterprise Rent-A-Car, laid them off from their jobs without notice in violation of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (“WARN”) Act.

Following several other federal courts, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, has ruled that workers who are paid on a daily rate basis are entitled to be paid time and one-half overtime for all work hours over 40 hours a week.

Starting January 30, 2022, minimum wage for federal contractors and subcontractors will be increased to $15.00 per hour. The change comes from a new, proposed rule from the Department of Labor (“DOL”), implementing President Joseph Biden’s April 27, 2021 Executive Order on Increasing the Minimum Wage for Federal Contractors.

Pursuant to a recent decision by the California Supreme Court, employers in California are now required to include the value of an employee’s commissions, bonuses, and other non-discretionary pay in the meal and rest break premiums to which employees are legally entitled when the employer fails to provide them with a meal and/or rest break.