On May 24, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans, which covers Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, upheld a district court’s decision that two highly compensated IT engineers were not properly paid on a salary basis and, therefore, not exempt from the overtime requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
According to law firm Jones Walker LLP, Terry Gentry, an IT engineer, filed suit on behalf of himself and a putative class alleging that his employer, Hamilton-Ryker IT Solutions (HR-IT), violated the FLSA’s overtime protections by failing to pay overtime wages to its nonexempt, hourly paid employees. Another IT engineer, Marc Taylor, joined the lawsuit.
HR-IT argued that both men were exempt from the FLSA’s overtime requirements under either the “highly compensated employee (HCE)” or the “learned professional” exemption, but the district court determined that because the plaintiffs were not paid on a salary basis, they were not exempt from the FLSA’s overtime requirements.
The district court awarded overtime pay owed to both employees plus liquidated damages in an amount equal to the OT pay. HR-IT appealed to the Fifth Circuit, but the Fifth Circuit affirmed the decision that the IT engineers were not exempt.
Two Apple Employees Sue Over Alleged Gender Discrimination in Pay
As reported by CNN, two female employees at Apple recently sued the company, alleging the company paid women less than men for the same work.
The women are proposing a class action, seeking to represent more than 12,000 current and former female employees in the engineering, marketing and AppleCare divisions.
The lawsuit centers on Apple’s hiring practices and performance evaluations, which the women allege pushed a wage gap between men and women.
California made it illegal for employers to ask job candidates about their prior pay in 2018. Instead, since January 2018, Apple asked about pay expectations, the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit alleges Apple used the pay expectation information to set starting salaries, which had lower pay rates for women compared to men who did similar work.
Wells Fargo Employees Fired After “Fake Work” Claims
As reported by USA Today, more than a dozen Wells Fargo employees were fired last month following an investigation about the bankers “fake working.”
A Bloomberg report revealed the financial services company found the employees, who all worked in the wealth and investment management unit, were creating the impression of active work by way of keyboard activity simulation.
They were all “discharged” on May 8 by Wells Fargo following an internal investigation of the claims, Bloomberg reported.
Best Buy Laying Off More Employees
Best Buy recently carried out another round of layoffs and job restructurings, with the company cutting some of its sales staff and reducing the pay for others, according to current and former employees who spoke with tech publication The Verge.
The layoffs appeared to have mostly targeted in-home sales roles called designers, who would go to customers’ homes to help identify products that would work in their space. Best Buy confirmed the layoffs in an email to The Verge but declined to share how many people were let go or how pay was changing.
Best Buy CEO Corie Barry told investors in February they should expect layoffs this year, and two months ago, mass layoffs of Geek Squad employees were reported.
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