The New Overtime Rule

The U.S. Department of Labor issued a final rule today changing the white collar overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act.  The final rule, which goes into effect on December 16, will:

  • Raise the  salary threshold indicating eligibility from $455/week to $913 ($47,476 per year), ensuring protections to 4.2 million workers; and,
  • The salary threshold will be automatically updated every three years, based on wage growth over time, increasing predictability.

This is a big achievement for the U.S. Department of Labor, which has had a decidedly mixed record under the Obama administration, and will benefit millions of low-paid workers – many of whom are women.

For now, white collar workers who earn more than $47,476 per year can still be subjected to merciless exploitation by their  corporate overlords.

dol.rule

Urban Outfitters “Asks” Salaried Workers to Volunteer

Can an employer ask a worker to “volunteer” to work on weekends?

This concept is being tested by the affluent retailer Urban Outfitters, Inc., which asked salaried employees at the company’s Philadelphia corporate headquarters to “volunteer” to work six-hour shifts on weekends throughout October at the  company’s new fulfillment center about 50 miles outside Philadelphia.  Urban Outfitters operates under the Anthropologie, Bhldn, Free People, Terrain and Urban Outfitters brands.  Somewhat ironically,  the company announced in August that its total  net sales had increased in the second quarter by 7% over the prior year to a record $867 million.

A memo leaked  to Gawker  states that “volunteers” will “work side by side with your [fulfillment center] colleagues to help pick, pack and ship orders for our wholesale and direct customers.” The memo continues: “In addition to servicing the needs of our customers, it’s a great way to experience our fulfillment operations first hand. Get your co-workers together for a team building activity!”

Salaried workers are exempt from the protection of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which established the 40-hour work week and regulates the payment of wages and overtime.  They can be forced to work uncompensated overtime. But it’s a different thing to ask workers – even salaried workers –  to volunteer. The FLSA prohibits for-profit employers from permitting any individual to “suffer or permit to” work without compensation. The definition of “volunteer” is to work without compensation. So it stands to reason that for-profit employers cannot ask any employee to “volunteer” to work.

The situation demonstrates the problems facing workers who are exempt from the FLSA – especially poorly paid white-collar workers.

Urban Outfitters’ CEO; Richard Hayne’s net worth is approximately $1.35 billion (according to the Forbes billionaires list) but many white-collar workers are not so lucky. They are  barely paid enough to put food on the table.  The FLSA’s “white collar” exemption applies to employees whose job duties primarily involve executive, administrative, or professional duties and who earn a salary of at least $455 per week or $23,660 a year. This poverty-level paycheck is particularly brutal for single parents (mainly women) who must schedule and pay for child care. And, let’s face it, an employer’s request for volunteers is inherently coercive. Only a courageous worker can pass up an opportunity to experience the fulfillment center “first hand” in a “team building activity”?

Last summer, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) announced a proposed rule to amend the FLSA “white-collar” exemption to eventually eliminate the exempt status of an estimated 21.4 million“white -collar”employees. The DOL’s proposed regulations dramatically increase the minimum salary threshold for exempt status workers to $970 per week or $50,440 per year. This represents the 40th percentile of earnings for all full-time salaried workers throughout the United States.

But for now, it appears that salaried workers at Urban Outfitters who don’t want to risk their jobs by refusing to “volunteer”  will be spending their weekends packing overpriced clothing into cardboard boxes.

It should be noted the FLSA does permit individuals to volunteer in the non-profit sector for religious, charitable, civic or humanitarian  organizations and to perform volunteer services for a state or local government agencies. Indeed, the U.S.Department of Justice  has the gall to retain licensed attorney volunteers for up to a year at a time to work as unpaid prosecutors along-side Assistant U.S. Attorneys who earn a starting salary of more than $75,000. Instead of leading the nation, it seems the federal government, including the Office of Personnel Management,  is intent upon perpetuating  hiring practices that are sadly antiquated and even discriminatory .

The DOL Addresses ‘White Collar’ Slavery

*The Dept. of Labor issued the final rule on May 19, 2016. The DOL  more than doubled the salary threshold for eligibility for overtime for full-time salaried workers — lifting it from $23,660 to $47,476 per year. That means some 35 percent of full-time salaried workers, based on their pay, will now be eligible for overtime. PGB

The Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 CFR Part 541, makes it possible for employers to impose a kind of slavery on poorly-paid salaried employees who are exempt from the protections of the act because they are classified as “white collar” workers.

However, the U.S. Department of Labor this week released proposed amendments to the FLSA  “white collar” exemption provision that would, if adopted, eventually eliminate the exempt status of an estimated  21.4  million so-called “white collar” employees.

The FLSA exemption now applies to employees whose job duties primarily involve executive, administrative, or professional duties and who  earn a salary of at least $455 per week or $23,660 a year.  The DOL’s proposed regulations dramatically increase the minimum salary threshold for exempt status workers to $970 per week or $50,440 per year. This represents the 40th percentile of earnings for all full-time salaried workers throughout the United States.

Low-level white collar workers are ripe for exploitation, especially during difficult economic times when jobs are scarce.  During the Great Recession, many employers forced poorly-paid white collar workers to work endless or erratic unpaid overtime hours  to compensate for lay-offs or short staffing.  This caused predictable stress and burnout, with all of the attendant problems for individuals and families.  The “white collar” exemption is particularly brutal for single parents (mostly women) who must schedule and pay for child care.

The DOL has not updated the “white collar” salary level since 2004.  To prevent the proposed new salary level from becoming outdated, the DOL’s proposes  automatically updating the salary level each year to reflect the applicable 40th  percentile of earnings.  Continue reading “The DOL Addresses ‘White Collar’ Slavery”

Fair Pay for White-Collar Workers

Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez has submitted a proposed rule addressing employer abuse of the white-collar overtime exemption in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review.

The FSLA was passed in 1938 and established the 40-hour workweek. The white-collar exemption allows employers to deny overtime compensation to executive, administrative, professional, and outside sales employees.

President Obama issued a directive last March ordering Perez to proposed a revision of the FLSA  “white-collar exemption” to address employer abuse and to increase to the rule’s salary basis test which has not been changed since 2004.

The details of Perez’ proposal have not been disclosed. He is expected to recommend increasing the number of people entitled to overtime wages by making it more difficult to qualify for the white-collar exemption.

Continue reading “Fair Pay for White-Collar Workers”

Chicago’s Innovative Effort to Stop Wage Theft

cityofbroadshoulders

The city of Chicago this month  became the second, and biggest, city to pass an ordinance addressing the problem of  wage theft.

The Chicago ordinance appears to be an innovative and potentially highly effective initiative to combat a  problem that disproportionately affects low wage workers and undocumented immigrants.

  The ordinance states any licensee that is in the business of debt collection must comply with federal and state wage and hour laws. It states that failure to comply with these laws  can result in the revocation of the company’s business license for at least four years.  The ordinance potentially covers most licensees, since most  companies  engage in debt collection in the ordinary course of business. This includes everything from licensed day care centers to hotels and beauty parlors.

 Last fall, the Broward County Commission in Florida passed an ordinance that allows employees who are owed $60 or more for work done in the county to turn to the county for help.  Before filing the complaint, however, the employee must write a letter to the employer outlining how much is owed. If the paycheck shows up within 15 days, the complaint wouldn’t be filed.

Epidemic

Wage theft is widely considered to be epidemic in the United States.

Aaccording to a report released last year by the Progressive States Network (PSN ) state laws are grossly inadequate to combat  “wage theft” by unscrupulous employers. Some states levy no fines at all for wage theft, according to the report, while most others invoke penalties smaller than a speeding ticket.

 There is, of course,  an overarching  federal law that prohibits wage theft – the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) – but it largely relies upon voluntary compliance.

 The FLSA establishes minimum wage, overtime pay, recordkeeping, and youth employment standards affecting employees in the private sector and in Federal, State, and local governments. Covered nonexempt workers are entitled to a minimum wage of not less than $7.25 per hour and overtime pay at a rate not less than one and one-half times the regular rate of pay is required after 40 hours of work in a workweek.

 The FLSA is technically “enforced” by the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) but, as the PSN report notes, the DOL has only one enforcement agent for every 141,000 workers, down from one per 11,000 workers in 1941.

 The PSN estimates that more than 60% of low-wage workers suffer wage violations each week.  On average, the PSN reports, low-wage workers lose $51 per week to wage theft, or $2,634 per year. For low-wage workers, that amounts to 15% of their annual income, at average earnings of $17,616 per year.

Misclassification of Employees

Rogue employers often evade complying with wage and hour laws by classifying non-exempt employees as exempt under the FLSA and thus not entitled to overtime.

I once worked for an organizaton that misclassified administrative assistants  as exempt, requiring them to work long periods of uncompensated overtime at conferences and events. After years of this, one employee filed an anonymous complaint with the DOL. The organization was forced to pay affected employees who were  then on the payroll minimal amounts to supposedly compensate them for their loss.  This was an insignificant penalty for the employer,  considering the years of abuse that had occurred and the many uncompensated victims who were no longer working at the company.

To qualify for an  exemption from the FLSA, an employee must be paid on a salary basis at a rate not less than $455 per week, must perform work directly related to the  management or business operation of the employer, and must be responsible for exercising independent judgment or discretion with respect to matters of significance.

 Another way that employers circumvent the FLSA is to classify employees as independent contractors. This is not inherently illegal but it can be if the purpose of the independent contractor classification  is to deny the employee access to benefits and protections – such as family and medical leave, overtime compensation, minimum wage pay and unemployment compensation.

 In 2011, the DOL launched a “Misclassification Initiative” to address the problem with respect to independent contractors. Thus far, the states of Iowa, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Utah and Washington have signed memorandums of agreement to join the DOL initiative. The agreements will enable the DOL to share information and coordinate enforcement efforts with the participating states.

 Misclassification creates economic pressure for law-abiding business owners, who find it difficult to compete with those who are skirting the law. Employee misclassification also generates substantial losses for state Unemployment Insurance and workers’ compensation funds.

 Alderman Ameya Pawar spearheaded the Chicago effort to pass the wage theft ordinance is quoted as stating: “I sponsored this ordinance because it’s something that’s deeply personal to me.  I’ve worked with refugees in the past and I’ve seen how vulnerable populations have become victims to wage theft.”

Getting Fired

FIRED!

The capstone of a campaign  of workplace abuse and bullying is often termination from the job.

 And that reality  – or even the fear of being fired  – can be a devastating blow to a worker who has endured months of  abuse that has stripped away his or her sense of mental and physical well-being.

 But today what does it really mean to be fired?

 I know business leaders who were fired  and recovered to achieve impressive new success.

 Sallie Krawcheck, past president of Merrill Lynch, US Trust, Smith Barney, the largest wealth management business in the world, suggests that if you don’t get fired at least once, maybe you’re not trying hard enough?

 She says that as the pace of change in business increases, the chances of having a placid career are receding. And if in this period of rapid change, you’re not making some notable mistakes along the way, you’re certainly not taking enough business and career chances.

 Being fired is not always a reflection of performance.

Research shows that some targets of workplace bullying are dismissed because they are creative, hard-working and well-liked employees who are seen as a threat by a supervisor or co-worker. They may be among the best in their workplace and that is why they are targeted.

 I also know bureaucrats (and I use that term  in the worst sense of the word)  who should be fired but probably never will be, despite their obvious incompetence.  They have managed to insinuate themselves into secure positions, by surrounding themselves with synchophants and/or by avoiding any personal responsibility for anything, except to claim success for others’ work.

Many  employees are fired because  a new supervisor wants to put in his or her own team in place or the worker’s values or vision don’t  comport with that of  the supervisor.

Many workers are fired for illegal reasons –  they are victim of discrimination on the basis of  age, sex, race, religion, etc.  Some are fired because they asked for a legal right – such as the right to be paid overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

 So if you were fired in the past year or expect to be in the year ahead, try to  keep it in perspective. Any employee who was fired can likely think of some things that they could have done better.  Hindsight is 50-50.  Nobody’s perfect.  Etc.   Hopefully, your new and hard-earned  knowledge will help you succeed the next time?

 Ms. Krawcheck also advises:

 I  had a friend tell me shortly after I left “When something like this happens, you think you’re thinking straight, but you’re not. You won’t think straight for at least three months.” If you have the luxury of avoiding any major career decisions that long, the perspective you gain after decompressing can be valuable.

Federal Courts Disregard Longstanding Worker Rights

Workers continue to lose ground in federal courts, where judges are disregarding a ruling by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that says companies cannot require workers to sign away their right to bring class action arbitrations and lawsuits.

 The NLRB’s  administrative decision in January  served as a theoretical  counterpoint to an earlier 5-to-4  decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion.

 The Concepcion case involved alleged false advertising by AT&T and a $30 claim by a California plaintiff, who sought to prosecute the case as  class  arbitration . As the  dissent noted in Concepcion: “What rational lawyer would have signed on to represent the Concepcions in litigation for the possibility of fees stemming from a $30.22 claim?”

 The Supreme Court majority held that the Federal Arbitration Act of 1925 preempts state laws that prohibit contracts from disallowing class action lawsuits  – which means that contracts can exclude class action arbitration. 

 The NLRB ruling involved national homebuilder D.R. Horton’s practice, begun in 2006, of forcing all employees to agree as a condition of employment, not to pursue class or collective litigation of claims in any forum –  arbitral or judicial.  In its ruling, the NLRB said it has long held –  “with uniform judicial approval” –  that the National Labor Relations Act “protects employees’ ability to join together to pursue workplace grievances, including through litigation.”  

According to Thompson Reuters’ journalist Nate Raymond,  courts generally are rejecting the NLRB decision, some on the grounds that the  Federal Arbitration Act controls, and others cite the Supreme Court’s Concepcion decision. For example, in recent months:

  •  U.S. District Judge Gene Pratter in Philadelphia agreed with Tenet Healthcare and confirmed an arbitrator’s finding that a nurse could not bring classwide wage-and-hour claims in arbitration. The nurse’s lawyer had cited D.R. Horton in arguing that the arbitrator had erred.
  •  U.S. District Judge D.P. Marhsall in Little Rock, Arkansas, on Aug. 1, 2012 concluded that the FAA trumped the NLRA. and compelled individual arbitration in a putative class action of guards suing Securitas Services Inc.   Marshall said that accepting the NLRB’s reasoning would mean favoring litigation over arbitration, in contrast to the federal policy of favoring arbitration.
  •  Employees at Waffle House Inc. cited D.R. Horton in an effort to convince U.S. District JudgeCarlos Murguia of Kansas City, Kansas, to not compel individual arbitration. They lost. “Although Concepcion may not speak directly to the issue before the court,” the judge wrote, “it does illustrate a guiding principle: arbitration agreements are enforceable even when they prohibit the use of a class action.”

 Thomas Reuter News Service reports that  judges in New York, California, Pennsylvania, Florida and Georgia have refused to allow employee class actions to move forward on the basis of the NLRB’s holding, in cases against Jenny Craig, Citigroup, P.F. Chang’s and UBS, among others.

The Concepcion decision likely will have a devestating impact upon workers who are cheated by unscrupulous employers out of overtime pay or hourly wages.

“Class claims frequently offer the only vehicle for consumers or employees to challenge unlawful actions that cause limited damages to each individual while often reaping millions for business,” law professor Ann C. Hodges writes in an American Constitutional Society blog analysis of D.R. Horton. “… In the workplace, Fair Labor Standards Act cases seeking minimum wage or overtime payments are most likely to be abandoned on this basis and Horton involved such a claim, alleging that the nonunion employer misclassified employees as exempt from overtime pay.”

The Progressive States Network (PSN) in a recent report entitled, Where Theft is Legal: Mapping Wage Theft Laws in the 50 States, estimates that more than 60 percent of low-wage workers suffer wage violations each week. On average, the PSN reports, low-wage workers lose $51 per week to wage theft, or $2,634 per year. For low-wage workers, that amounts to 15% of their annual income, at average earnings of $17,616 per year.

Federal judges are appointed for life (in good behavior) and earn annual salaries of $174,000..

* See earlier reporting by this blog on federal court judges’ hostility to employment discrmination lawsuits.

Resolved … Don’t Be Evil

The vast majority of workplace bullies don’t think of themselves that way. They justify or make excuses about their behavior. However, I suspect that many workplace bullies – at least those who are not actual psychopaths or sociopaths – do know on some level that what they are doing is wrong.

Every manager should consider the following:

  • How would you feel if your mother, child or partner was treated the way you treat your target? Not so good? Then what you are doing is wrong.
  • Are you flattering yourself?  Are you really a perfectionist trying to get the best out of your workforce or are you a petty tyrant satisfying a personal need for power and control?  If the latter, your actions are damaging both the target and your employer.
  •  There is a fine line between workplace abuse and other forms of abuse, including intimate partner abuse, child abuse and elder abuse. Especially for those in a supervisory position, when you zero in on a subordinate target, visualize a small child who is about to be smacked.
  •  Yes, some employees deserve to be disciplined and/ or fired but there is a difference between exercising legitimate supervisory authority and bullying. No employee ever deserves to be treated disrespectfully or bullied.
  • If you are an employer who is using bullying strategically to avoid a legal obligation – such as paying workers compensation – you are taking a serious risk. Sometimes targets of bullying do not simply fade into obscurity. They hire lawyers and sue.  And whether they win or lose, you will pay.
  •  Bullies are “ fortunate” to work in the United States, which unlike many other industrialized countries for decades has ignored  overwhelming research that workplace bullying causes potentially severe mental and physical damages to targets. But times are changing. Educated employers do not tolerate bullying because they know that they ultimately pick up the tab in terms of needless turnover, absenteeism, higher health costs, litigation, etc.
  • If you are a Human Resources “professional” and you turn a blind eye when a worker complains to you about being bullied – or make things worse for the target – you are part of the problem.  You are acting unethically and doing a great disservice to your employer.

New research is showing that workplace bullies are often their own worst enemies.  American is growing less tolerant of this kind of management style.  It’s one thing if a manager gets an isolated complaint but it can quickly end a promising  career when there are multiple bullying complaints. For all of the above reasons and many more, I propose the following resolution for workplace bullies in 2012:

  DON’T BE EVIL!

How the Justice Dept. Gets Away With It

 The U.S. Department of Justice is advertising for experienced, licensed “volunteer”  attorneys to work for a year or two without pay alongside Assistant U.S. Attorneys, who earn a starting salary of more than $75,000.

If such an  advertisement was placed by a private employer, it would raise questions of legality? How does the Justice Dept. get away with blatant exploitation of workers?

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires employers to pay workers the minimum wage and overtime except in a few limited circumstances – those who volunteer for religious, charitable, civic or humanitarian non-profit organizations and (you guessed it) individuals who volunteer to perform services for a state or local government agency.  The only time a for-profit employer can get away without paying a worker is when the worker is a so-called “intern,”

All of this comes at a time of high unemployment for lawyers, particularly graduating law school students.

The Wall Street Journal did a story on Sept. 2, 2011 stating there currently is less than one opening for every 100 working attorneys. Unemployment is a serious problem for attorneys, just as it is for every other occupation right now.  The unpaid “volunteers”  displace regular employees. Also, there is just something downright hypocritical about the situation. How can federal prosecutors go after employers who violate the FLSA with a straight face?

Finally, there is a great deal of “classism” in our society. We bemoan the immigrant farm worker who is cheated by the big farm corporation but it’s OK for some reason to exploit attorneys?  Is it some kind of misguided vanity that allows the bar to look at a situation such as this and fail to see the problem?

Without the  FLSA exemption, the use of unpaid Special Assistant U.S. Attorneys (SAUSA) would clearly violate the FLSA.

The SAUSA does not qualify as an intern because training is not the primary purpose of the SAUSA; because the government derives benefit from the SAUSA’s work; and, the SAUSA is doing the work of a regular employee and replaces regular employees.

The SAUSA is already a trained, licensed, experienced professional.  In fact, they have to have “outstanding” academic records and “superior” research and writing skills.   The SAUSA works alongside paid Assistant U.S. Attorneys doing legal research, drafting briefs, conducting hearings and trials, and attending judicial proceedings .  The “volunteer” gets nothing except the dim, uncertain hope of future employment.

Imagine a situation where a SAUSA, who is working for nothing, prosecutes a for-profit employer for failing to pay just wages and overtime.

The DOL issued a “fact sheet” last year listing the circumstances that dictate whether or not an intern must be paid. Essentially, a for-profit institution does not have to pay an employee whose work serves only his or her own interests.  The DOL listed six criteria to determine whether a worker is a bona fide intern:

  1. The internship is similar to training which would be given in an educational environment;
  2. The internship experience is for the benefit of the intern;
  3. The intern does not displace regular employees, but works under close supervision of existing staff;
  4. The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern; and on occasion its operations may actually be impeded;
  5. The intern is not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the internship; and
  6. The employer and the intern understand that the intern is not entitled to wages for the time spent in the internship.

There is little question that a SAUSA does not qualify as an “intern” and that is probably why the SAUSA is not called an intern.

Ironically, the Justice Department advertisements assure that it is an “Equal Opportunity/Reasonable Accommodation” employer.

(Note: this is Part II of a story written on Sept. 7, 2011, Justice Department Seeks Law-Unteers)

Other Federal Laws

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH ACT OF 1970

Some experts say the Occupational Safety and Health Administration should take the lead on combating workplace bullying.*  There is overwhelming evidence that workplace bullying can lead to serious injury and even death.  In fact, a term has been coined for workers who are driven to suicide as a result of bullying – “bullycide.”  In several other countries, workplace bullying is considered a health and safety issues and is regulated by a federal agency like OSHA. 

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration in May 2011 adopted a safety program for its own workers that includes a workplace anti-bully policy. The policy is contained in a 278-page document, the OSHA Field Health and Safety Manual,  which outlines safety practices for OSHA’s field offices. It was drafted in cooperation with the National Council of Field Labor Locals, a union that represents OSHA workers.

OSHA’s workplace bullying policy is significant because the General Duty Clause of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 requires employers to “furnish to each of his employees employment and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to his employees … .” However, OSHA has not enforced that provision with respect to workplace bullying.

The stated purpose of the workplace bullying policy adopted by OSHA for its own workers,  contained in the manual’s “Violence in the Workplace” chapter. is: ”To provide a workplace that is free from violence, harassment, intimidation, and other disruptive behavior.”

Here is the OSHA General Duty Clause, Section 5(a)(1) SEC. 5:

Duties

(a) Each employer —

(2) shall comply with occupational safety and health standards promulgated under this Act.

(1) shall furnish to each of his employees employment and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to his employees …

*See Susan Harthill. “The Need for a Revitalized Regulatory Scheme to Address Workplace Bullying in the United States: Harnessing the Federal Occupational Safety and Health Act.” University of Cincinnati Law Review 78.4 (2010): 1250-1306.

WAGE AND HOUR LAWS

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) does not address workplace bullying per se but it can be used to combat certain types of abuse. The FLSA establishes minimum wage, overtime pay, record keeping, and youth employment standards affecting employees in the private sector and in Federal, State, and local governments. Covered nonexempt workers are entitled to a minimum wage of not less than $7.25 per hour effective July 24, 2009. Overtime pay at a rate not less than one and one-half times the regular rate of pay is required after 40 hours of work in a workweek.  The FLSA is administered by the U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division  If one aspect of the bullying campaign is failure to pay proper wages or overtime, for example, the FLSA is one potential remedy.

THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS ACT

The National Labor Relations Act  (NLRA) was passed in 1935 to protect the right of employees in the private sector to create labor unions, engage in collective bargaining and to take part in strikes. The act is also known as the Wagner Act, after its sponsor, Sen. Robert F. Wagner.  The act is regulated by the National Labor Relations Board.

 Specifically, the National Labor Relations Board protects the rights of employees to engage in “protected concerted activity,”  which is when two or more employees take action for their mutual aid or protection regarding terms and conditions of employment.  A single employee may also engage in protected concerted activity if he or she is acting on the authority of other employees, bringing group complaints to the employer’s attention, trying to induce group action, or seeking to prepare for group action.

A few examples of protected concerted activities are:

  • Two or more employees addressing their employer about improving their pay.
  • Two or more employees discussing work-related issues beyond pay, such as safety concerns, with each other.
  • An employee speaking to an employer on behalf of one or more co-workers about improving workplace conditions.

Most employees in the private sector are covered by the NLRA. However, the Act specifically excludes individuals who are employed by federal, state, or local governments, agricultural laborers, some close relatives of the employer, domestic servants in a home, independent contractors, employers subject to the Railway Labor Act, etc.

FAMILY AND MEDICAL LEAVE ACT

The Familiy and Medical Leave Act (FMLA offers potential help for employees who are suffering health effects from workplace abuse.  Administered by the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor, it  entitles eligible employees of covered employers to take unpaid, job-protected leave for specified family and medical reasons with continuation of group health insurance coverage under the same terms and conditions as if the employee had not taken leave. Eligible employees are entitled to:

Twelve workweeks of leave in a 12-month period for:

-the birth of a child and to care for the newborn child within one year of birth;

-the placement with the employee of a child for adoption or foster care and to care for the newly placed child within one year of placement;

-to care for the employee’s spouse, child, or parent who has a serious health condition;

a serious health condition that makes the employee unable to perform the essential functions of his or her job;

– any qualifying exigency arising out of the fact that the employee’s spouse, son, daughter, or parent is a covered military member on “covered active duty;” or

Twenty-six workweeks of leave during a single 12-month period to care for a covered service member with a serious injury or illness who is the spouse, son, daughter, parent, or next of kin to the employee (military caregiver leave).