Seventh Circuit

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By: Alex Simon and Kyle Petersen

Seyfarth Synopsis: In a welcome turn of events, the Seventh Circuit has taken up the question of what is the appropriate standard for court-authorized notice in collective actions.

When this Blog wrote two weeks ago, “Swales, Clark, and Laverenz pave the way for additional district and appellate courts to depart from…

Continue Reading The Seventh Circuit Has Entered the Chat. Joining the Fifth and Sixth Circuits before it, the Seventh Circuit Agrees to Review the Standard for Sending Court-Authorized Notice to Potential Plaintiffs in Collective Actions.

Authored by Cheryl Luce

Employers often grapple with what to do when their policies prohibit off-duty work, like working on mobile devices after hours, that employees don’t follow. Even if it has a policy prohibiting off-duty work, if the employer knows (or should know) an employees is working, the employer must compensate the employee for the off-duty work. The same…
Continue Reading Seventh Circuit Sends Police Officers’ Off-Duty BlackBerry Claims to Spam Folder

Authored by Holger G. Besch 

Perhaps signaling the importance of the issue for American businesses and jurisprudence, the U.S. Supreme Court‎ chose the first day of its term beginning in October as the date to set oral arguments in three petitions for certiorari asking whether employees can be required to waive their rights via arbitration agreements to file class and…
Continue Reading SCOTUS Puts the Class Action Waiver Issue at the Top of Its Agenda

Supreme-Court-seaslCo-authored by Kara Goodwin and Noah Finkel

Pending before the United States Supreme Court is a petition for writ of certiorari asking the Court to determine whether an employer may use payments for bona fide meal periods as an offset/credit against compensable work time. If the Supreme Court accepts the case, it would also provide an excellent opportunity for the…
Continue Reading No Good Deed Goes Unpunished – The Supreme Court May Decide Whether Payments for Meal Breaks Can Offset Alleged Off-The-Clock Work

Co-authored by Christopher M. Cascino and Jennifer A. Riley

Seyfarth Synopsis: A federal district court last week decertified and effectively grounded a collective action of O’Hare Airport janitorial staff who claimed that their employer forced them to work off-the-clock without compensation. This decision, Solsol v. Scrub, Inc., stands out as a significant victory for employers because, even though all of …
Continue Reading Court Grounds O’Hare Janitors’ Collective Action For Off-the-Clock Work

Co-authored by Gerald L. Maatman, Jr. and Jennifer A. Riley

Seyfarth Synopsis: In McCaster v. Darden Restaurants, the Seventh Circuit affirmed the District Court’s order denying class certification of claims for denial of earned vacation benefits at separation and granting summary judgment on part-time workers’ claims for accrual of benefits under policies that limited eligibility to full-time employees. The …
Continue Reading Vacation Policies Are Not All-Inclusive; Seventh Circuit Denies Bid to Certify Class And Affirms Summary Judgment on Part-Time Claims

Co-authored by Molly C. Mooney and Noah Finkel

Last week, a federal judge in the Northern District of Illinois lifted the weight of collective action certification off Life Time Fitness, Inc. and refused to certify a proposed collective of more than 6,000 personal trainers because each trainer’s employment varied too much to resolve their potential claims on a collective basis.
Continue Reading Lifting the Weight: Conditional Certification Denied for Personal Trainers Claiming Off-the-Clock Work

Co-authored by Arthur Rooney and Abad Lopez

Under FLSA section 203(o), time spent “changing clothes or washing at the beginning or end of each workday” is excluded from compensable time if it is treated as non-work time by a collective bargaining agreement.  So, does section 203(o) only apply to time spent donning and doffing at the beginning and end…
Continue Reading Try This On For Size: Seventh Circuit Rejects Factory Workers’ Donning and Doffing Claims Based On Expansive View Of The “Workday”

supreme court.jpgAuthored by Steve Shardonofsky

Earlier this year, we commented [here] that the Supreme Court agreed to review the Seventh Circuit’s decision in Sandifer v. U.S. Steel rejecting claims by 800 factory workers that they are owed wages for time spent before and after their shifts in a locker room changing into and out of their job-required protective gear. …

Continue Reading HANGING ITS OPINION ON THE “CLOTHES” LINE: ORGANIZED LABOR WEIGHS IN ON THE DONNING/DOFFING DEBATE

supreme court.jpgCo-authored by Richard Alfred and Patrick Bannon

In a post last week, we predicted that the Supreme Court’s opinion in Comcast v. Behrend would have “monumental” implications for wage and hour class actions (read more here). Some of our readers, especially although not exclusively on the plaintiffs’ side interpreted the opinion much more narrowly. 

Exactly five days after issuing Comcast…

Continue Reading With the Speed of Broadband–Supreme Court Applies Comcast to Wage and Hour Case