New Jersey Wage and Hour Attorneys Tag Archives

Published on: January 19, 2025

U.S. Supreme Court Clarifies Employer’s Burden for Proving that Employee is Exempt From Overtime

In lawsuits where employees claim their employer wrongfully withheld overtime or minimum wage, if the employer claims that the employees were “exempt” it bears the burden of proving that they actually met the requirements of the exemption under the Federal Fair Labor dc-court-appeals-district-columbia-building-abraham-lincoln-statue-74985350 Standards Act. There was a split among the Federal Circuit Courts of Appeals regarding what that burden of proof was. The United States Supreme Court has now resolved that conflict in the case of E.M.D. Sales Inc. v. Carrera.

Wage and Hour Protections for New Jersey Employees

New Jersey employment law provides that employers must pay minimum wage and overtime to most employees unless they are exempt. The Federal Fair Labor Standards Act provides similar protections. The main exemptions under both Federal and New Jersey employment law are similar. Administrative, executive, professional and “outside sales” employees are exempt from minimum wage and overtime provided they make a minimum salary.

Published on: January 12, 2025

New Jersey Employment Law Strengthened to Prevent Employers Using Immigration Status to Evade Paying Wages

by Maurice W. McLaughlin

New Jersey employment law offers strong protections to employees. Among these are the New Jersey Wage Payment Law and the New Jersey Wage and Hour Law, both of which were amended in 2019 to increase the statute of limitations from two years to six, and increase 3-225x300 penalties for violations. In August 2024, the New Jersey Legislature further strengthened these laws to prevent employers from taking advantage of complaining employees because of their immigration status.

New Jersey Wage Protections

New Jersey’s Wage and Hour Law and Wage Payment Law provides the basic protections regarding the payment of wages to New Jersey employees. (The Federal Fair Labor Standards Act provides similar penalties at the Federal level, but with a shorter limitation period and lesser penalties.) Failure to pay overtime or minimum wage, or failure to pay wages to employees when due, allows the employee to recover her unpaid wages for the last six years plus liquidated damages, making the entire recover 300 percent of the wrongfully unpaid wages. Additionally, the employer will be required to pay the employee’s attorneys fees. (An employer will have a good faith defense available for liquidated damages for a first violation, but not for the unpaid wages themselves or the employee’s attorneys fees.)

Published on: August 28, 2024

New Jersey Employment Law Protecting Temporary Workers Survives Challenge in Federal Appeals Court

by Maurice W. McLaughlin

The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which hears appeals from federal district courts in New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania and the United States Virgin Islands, recently rejected a challenge to the New Jersey Temporary Workers’ Bill of Rights in the case of New Jersey Staffing Alliance vs. Cari Fais, Acting Director of the New Jersey State Division of Consumer supreme-court-building-1209701__340-300x200 Affairs in the Department of Law and Public Safety.

Background: The New Jersey Temporary Workers Bill of Rights

The New Jersey Temporary Workers’ Bill of Rights was passed by the New Jersey Legislature in 2023. It was designed to protect temporary workers employed in New Jersey. It enacted several measures to meet this goal. These include disclosure requirements and certification procedures. It also imposes joint and several liability on both staffing firms and the businesses which obtain temporary workers through those staffing firms.

Published on: July 1, 2024

New Protections of New Jersey Wage and Hour Law and New Jersey Wage Payment Law Apply Prospectively, Supreme Court Rules

by Maurice W. McLaughlin

New Jersey employment law affords significant wage and hour protections to employees through the New Jersey Wage and Hour Law and the New Jersey Wage Payment Law. Both laws were significantly strengthened by amendments in 2019, adding additional penalties, 6-300x225 recovery of attorneys fees, enhanced damages, and a longer, six-year statute of limitations. One question left open by the Legislature was whether the statute of limitations would be applied retroactively to cover conduct prior to the amendments, or prospectively to cover only conduct from 2019 onward. The New Jersey Supreme Court has now unambiguously answered that question.

The New Jersey Wage Payment Law

The New Jersey Wage Payment Law was enacted in 1965 and governs the timing and payment of wages. It prohibits withholdings of wages unless the law expressly allows or requires. Wages must be paid at least twice per month, and no later than 10 days after the pay period covered. The employee must be told in advance what she will be earning, and before any changes to her pay are made. She must be paid all wages due when she leaves employment on the next regular payday.

Published on: April 26, 2024

New Employment Law Regulation Makes Many More Employees Eligible for Overtime

by Maurice W. McLaughlin

The Wage and Hour Division of the United States Department of Labor has issued a new regulation vastly increasing the number of employees who are entitled to overtime.

Background

Both Federal and New Jersey employment law both require that employees must be paid one and a half times their regular hourly rate (“time courthouse-1223280__340-300x200 and a half”) for work beyond forty hours in any week. However, there are exceptions. The major exemptions are for executive, administrative, professional, and highly compensated employees. In addition to the requirements particular to each exemption, the employees cannot be paid less than the threshold for the exemption.

Published on: October 18, 2023

New Jersey Wage and Hour Decision Demonstrates Power of Recordkeeping – And the Perils of the Lack of It

by Maurice W. McLaughlin

New Jersey employment law requires that employees must be paid at regular intervals, at least twice per month. The proposition that employees should be paid for the time that they work does not seem to be illogical. However, litigation over non-payment of wages is all too us-supreme-court-300x200 common. The New Jersey Appellate Division recently addressed one of the laws behind this issue in the case of Veronica Villalobos v. Beast Coast Moving Limited Liability Company.

Background

Veronica Vilalobos and Joe Esquijarosa brought suit against their employer, Beast Coast Moving Limited Liability Company, for violation of the New Jersey Wage Payment Law, in the Law Division of the Superior Court of New Jersey, sitting in Bergen County.

Published on: March 5, 2023

New Jersey Employment Law Case Examines the Effect of Amendments Concerning Time to File a Lawsuit for Wage and Hour Violations

by Maurice W. McLaughlin

The New Jersey Wage and Hour Law and Wage Payment Law

Like the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act, New Jersey’s Wage and Hour Law requires that employers pay non-exempt employees minimum wage for all hours that they work, and overtime (time and a half) when employees work more than forty hours per week. New Jersey’s Wage Payment Law requires that employers pay employees pay all employment_law_damages wages that they are due, and sets forth the timing and procedures for payments and permitted deductions. This is a much-litigated area of New Jersey employment law.

Suits under the New Jersey Wage and Hour Law and Wage Payment Law have long been required to be brought within two years of the violations or they would be time barred. However, in 2019 the New Jersey Legislature amended both laws to extend the time for filing a civil lawsuit for violation of the laws from two to six years. The amendments were silent about whether they would apply retroactively or only going forward. Generally, unless the Legislature provides for retroactive application of new statutes of limitations they apply only prospectively – in other words they normally apply only going forward to acts which occurred after the amendment, not looking backward to what happened before. These amendments were to take effect immediately upon enactment, which occurred on August 6, 2019.

Published on: January 2, 2022

New Jersey Raises Minimum Wage Rate In 2022

by Maurice W. McLaughlin

The Increase

New Jersey’s minimum wage rate is going up again. The new minimum wage rate during this incremental increase is $13 per hour effective January 1, 2022. stock-photo-20612112-woman-leading-business-team

Background

Published on: May 6, 2021

New Jersey Employment Law Opinion Examines Classification of Employees and Independent Contractors

by Maurice W. McLaughlin

New Jersey employment law governs the classification of workers as employees or independent contractors. The classification is important and fact sensitive. It has far reaching consequences. The Appellate Division recently issued a published opinion in imagesCAWQ89PS the case of East Bay Drywall, LLC vs. the Department of Labor and Workforce Development, which examined some of these issues and provides guidance for both employers and employees.

Background

The Department of Labor and Workforce Development administers the New Jersey Unemployment Compensation and Temporary Disability Insurance Laws. It collects revenues from employers and employees to fund these benefits. However, “employers” only need to make contributions for their “employees,” not for independent contractors. Therefore, there is an economic incentive for businesses to classify workers as contractors rather than employees. However, misclassification can trigger severe consequences.

Published on: January 21, 2021

New Jersey Supreme Court Explores Good Faith Defense For Employer’s Failure to Pay Overtime Under New Jersey Wage and Hour Law

by Maurice W. McLaughlin

The New Jersey Wage and Hour Law regulates minimum wage and overtime requirements. It is New Jersey’s counterpart to the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act. The Wage and Hour Law and Fair Labor Standards Act are bedrock elements of New Jersey employment law. Under the Wage and Hour Law, New Jersey employers must pay overtime at a rate of one and half times an employee’s regular pay if she works more than forty hours a week. However, if the employer is in imagesCAWQ89PS the trucking industry, the employer is only legally required to pay overtime at the rate of one and half times minimum wage. However, if the employer should have paid the higher rate but paid the lower rate, it can raise the defense that it did so in “good faith” reliance on government orders or regulations.

In the case of Branch v. Cream-O-Land Dairy, Elmer Branch filed a class action lawsuit in the New Jersey Superior Court against his employer, Cream-O-Land Dairy, on behalf of himself and similarly situated truck drivers employees, for non-payment of overtime in violation of the Wage and Hour Law. Cream-O-Land argued that it was not required to pay the higher rate for two reasons. First, it argued that it was a “trucking industry employer,” and that all the employees were paid at least the lower overtime rate. Second, it argued that it met the “good faith” defense. The trial agreed that Cream-O-Land satisfied the good faith defense and dismissed the case on that ground. Branch appealed to the Appellate Division of the Superior Court which reversed, finding that the matters on which Cream-O-Land relied did not satisfy the statutory requirements of the Wage and Hour Law.

Cream-O-Land then appealed to the Supreme Court of New Jersey. Because the trial judge did not address the exemption for trucking industry employers the Supreme Court, like the Appellate Division, examined only whether Cream-O-Land satisfied the good faith defense. It ruled that it did not.