On November 10, 2022, the Ninth Circuit denied the request of Jan-Pro Franchising International Inc. (“Jan-Pro”) to review the United States District Court for the Northern District of California’s August 2, 2022 order granting a group of janitors class action certification in a lawsuit alleging Jan-Pro misclassified its janitors as independent contractors. The action began in 2008 when a group of janitors sued Jan-Pro in Massachusetts federal court. After the…
On October 28th, 2022, the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry’s Joint Task Force on Misclassification of Employees (“Joint Task Force”) held its tenth meeting of the year. The Joint Task Force was created when Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf signed Act 85 into law in October 2020, which called for the creation of a Joint Task Force to be composed of seven members (or their designees) and chaired by the…
On October 11, 2022, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the Central District of California’s denial of a motion for a preliminary injunction to restrain the California Attorney General from applying California’s “ABC test,” as codified in California’s Assembly Bill 5 (“AB 5”), to political canvassers. Under precedent established in Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court, 4 Cal. 5th 903 (2018) to prove workers…
On October 13, 2022, the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor ("DOL") published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking regarding a new standard for determining whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The proposed rule, entitled “Employee or Independent Contractor Classification Under the Fair Labor Standards Act,” would create a six-factor framework for classifying workers as employees or…
On September 21, 2022, Burlington Coat Factory (“Burlington” or the “Company”) agreed to pay $11 million to settle a class action lawsuit involving claims that the Company misclassified over 1,700 Assistant Store Managers (“ASMs”) and failed to pay overtime wages. The settlement comes after the Company settled two related actions in 2020 for nearly $20 million. In February of 2022, ASM Kim Payton-Fernandez filed a complaint alleging that Defendant violated…
On September 23, 2022, the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry’s Joint Task Force on Misclassification of Employees (“Joint Task Force”) held its ninth meeting of the year. The Joint Task Force, comprised of seven bipartisan members and their designees, was created in October 2020 as a result of Act 85 (House Bill 716) to evaluate the status of worker misclassification in Pennsylvania and develop recommendations to present to the…
On August 26, 2022, Chief Magistrate Judge Joseph C. Spero of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California (the “Court”) preliminarily approved a $185 million settlement (the “Settlement”) between classes of minor league baseball players (“minor leaguers” or “Plaintiffs”) and Major League Baseball and its 30 member Clubs (“MLB” or “Defendants”) in a wage and hour class action lawsuit that proceeded for more than eight years.…
On September 2, 2022, Plaintiff, Grace Flannery (“Plaintiff") filed a complaint on behalf of herself and similarly situated class members against her former employer, Spirit Airlines Inc. (“Defendant” or “Spirit”), in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. Spirit is a major commercial airline headquartered in Miramar, Florida that serves more than 90 destinations across the U.S., Latin America, and the Caribbean. Plaintiff, represented by Nathan…
Pennsylvania’s Joint Task Force on Misclassification of Employees (“Task Force”) held its eighth meeting of the year on August 26, 2022, the fifth in-person meeting since its assembly in January 2021. The Task Force is a bipartisan group of nominated volunteers representing business, labor, and government seeking to publicize a comprehensive understanding of worker misclassification and its consequences. Deputy Secretary for Safety and Labor-Management Relations and Chairman of the Task…
On July 6th, 2022, American Airlines carrier Envoy Air (“Envoy” or the “Company” or “Defendant”) reached a binding settlement agreement with former employee and lead Plaintiff Maysoun Abudayyeh on behalf of herself and similarly situated class members (collectively, “Plaintiffs”). While the details of the settlement agreement are not yet available, according to the reports of Magistrate Judge Heather K. McShain of the United States District Court for the Northern District…