Practice Areas: Labor & Employment

Wage and Hour

McGuireWoods represents many clients in wage and hour class and collective actions throughout the country. These cases have involved misclassification, "off the clock" work, meal and rest periods, donning and doffing, and recordkeeping issues, among others. We also counsel clients on how to adopt proper policies and procedures to ensure compliance, advise on ways to minimize the cost of compliance and the risks of non-compliance, provide training for managers and supervisors, assist employers in responding to government investigations and audits, and represent employers in litigation in federal and state courts.

Representative Work

• Obtained dismissal of a putative class action involving 34 plaintiffs on the grounds that the state law claims under the Illinois Wage Payment Act for failure to pay overtime were preempted by §301 of the LMRA and barred by failure to exhaust administrative remedies under a collective bargaining agreement. We later prevailed in the arbitration of subsequently-filed grievances on the grounds that they were untimely filed.
• Obtained summary judgment in favor of our clients in two class actions filed on behalf of migrant workers in Florida. The Court rejected claims by a putative class of thousands of migrant workers that our clients, the owners of the timber, were joint employers with the farm labor contractors who hired the migrant workers.
• Successfully defended a department store chain in a class action brought by in-store makeup artists concerning payment for travel time and other issues. We asserted that the makeup artists were exempt under the administrative and creative professional exemptions, and obtained a favorable class-wide disposition.
• Obtained a favorable ruling in an ongoing matter that the FLSA preempts the application of RICO and certain state laws that might otherwise provide additional remedies for alleged FLSA violations.
• In addition, as one of many examples of our partnering with clients in strategic defense management, McGuireWoods represents a national financial services institution in the defense of all class action and collective action FLSA and other wage and hour claims asserted against the organization nationwide.