New York Employment Lawyer Blog

The Delaware Employment Law Blog has released its annual list of the top 100 Employment Law Blogs. It is a good resource for current information on employment law.

Mark Toss from the Manpower Employment Blawg notes some great new trends for employee rights. Mark obtained his information from the latest study from Jury Verdict Research. I just ordered my own copy of the study from here. Here are some of the highlights from Mark’s post.
1. Median Employment Verdicts are up 60% from last year to $326K from $208K
2. Employees had a 61% win rate
3. Employees should avoid federal court because they have a better chance of losing and will recover less money if they do win.
4. Employees win more money and more often in state court.
5. Age discrimination cases have the highest win rates and the highest verdicts
6. The average employment settlement was $90,000, a 20% increase over last year.
These are great numbers for employees. The statistics were not nearly so good in past years so this is a great new trend for employee rights.

The Second Circuit decided Young v. Cooper Cameron on November 12, 2009. Andrew Young designed hydraulic power units for oil rigs. Young, like most of the other product designers at his company, never went to college. Instead, Young acquired expertise over his twenty year career in various engineering positions. His job required a fair amount of skill as he designed complicated pieces of equipment. Young’s employer, Cooper Cameron Corporation, categorized him as an exempt professional under the Fair Labor Standards Act and paid him a salary with no overtime.

Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, employees who are deemed “professional” are exempt from the overtime pay rules. Young challenged Cooper Cameron claiming that he was entitled to overtime pay because he was misclassified as a professional under the FSLA. The District Court agreed and found that Cameron Cooper misclassified Young and that Young was entitled to overtime pay. The Second Circuit agreed.

In order to qualify as an exempt professional under the FSLA, the position in question must customarily require an advanced academic degree. The regulations state that a professional is someone “[w]hose primary duty consists of the performance of [w]ork requiring knowledge of an advance type in a field of science or learning customarily acquired by a prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction and study.” 29 C.F.R. § 541.3(a). Labels such as “engineer” and the like are not persuasive as the court noted that there are many engineers who do not hold advanced degrees.

In this case, none of the product design specialists employed by Cameron Cooper had advanced degrees. They were all high school graduates with no college training. Since the work of a product design specialist at Cooper Cameron did not customarily require a prolonged course of specialized intellectual study, the Court held that Young was misclassified as a professional and therefore entitled to overtime pay.

The Fair Labor Standards Act requires that employees be paid overtime (time and half) for all hours worked over 40 in a week. Seems like a simple concept, but it is not. Many employees are exempt from the overtime requirement and therefore are not entitled to overtime pay even if they work more than 40 hours per week. Employees who are considered “administrative” are exempt from the overtime requirement. The Second Circuit just issued a case, Whalen v. J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., which clarifies what it means for an employee to be deemed administrative under the FSLA.

The Whalen court focused on the difference between jobs that are” production” oriented as opposed to “administrative.” Employees who spend their time working on production activities are entitled to overtime pay, while those who work at administrative tasks are not entitled to overtime. The court never provides a solid reason as to why production employees are entitled to overtime pay and administrative workers are not. According to Whalen, a human resources associate is engaged in administrative work and not entitled to overtime pay, but a police detective is engaged in production work and therefore entitled to overtime. The court goes on for eighteen pages pointing out the differences between production and administrative jobs, but sadly a solid underlying reason for this distinction is not provided. Maybe that is because the rules that regulate the payment of overtime pay are not based on logic, but instead rooted in lobbying and politics. The next post will focus on the nuances that differentiate administrative and production employees under the FSLA.