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On March 11, President Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 into law. Among other things, the Act provides emergency paid sick leave to federal employees, to be used between March 11, 2021 and September 30, 2021, for qualifying reasons related to COVID-19.

A California appellate court upheld a California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) decision that the City of South Pasadena dismissed fire fighter Cliff Snider in retaliation for his union activities as president of the South Pasadena Fire Fighters’ Association, International Association of Fire Fighters, Local 3657.

With some notable exceptions, the law generally treats employees as “at will,” meaning they can be fired for any reason or no reason at all. Civil rights statutes such as Title VII prohibit discriminatory firings, meaning an employer may not terminate an employee because of their race, sex, national origin, religion, or for being a member of another protected class.

MSE filed a lawsuit on behalf of employees of the New York City Department of Homeless Services after the employees were not paid for all the work that the City “suffered or permitted” them to work outside of their eight-hour shifts.

A federal judge in California ruled that time spent by Apple employees completing bag checks after their shift is compensable work. On March 3, 2020, a U.S. Federal District Judge held that Apple is liable in a class action involving California retail store workers for time spent working off the clock undergoing back checks.

On February 26, 2021, counsel for a class of Wells Fargo “Home Mortgage Consultants” filed a motion to approve a class settlement with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California for $95,696,122.35.

The Fair Labor Standards Act requires payment for “work,” but does not define the term. For most workers, the “workday” begins long before clocking in. We set alarms, change clothes, check emails, and travel to our workplaces. The law is clear that most preparatory tasks like these—those occurring at home or while commuting—are not compensable.

The Uniformed Services Employee and Reemployment Rights Act (“USERRA”)—a federal law protecting employment rights of service members—mandates that employers provide the same “rights and benefits” to employees on military leave as they do for employees on “comparable” non-military leave.

It is the employer’s responsibility to keep track of employee overtime hours, and when they fail to do so, employees get the benefit of a relaxed standard of proof: they only need to prove their hours of work by a “just and reasonable inference,” including by estimates, averages, and approximations.

Workers’ rights to not be mislabeled as independent contractors by employers was reaffirmed by the California Supreme Court Friday. Earlier this year, the California Supreme Court ruled in Vazquez et al v. Jan-Pro Franchising International, that the Dynamex ABC Test applies retroactively, allowing workers to utilize the ABC Test for cases filed before the test was established.