the merits, as demonstrated by Higgins, et al. v. Bayada Home Health Care Inc., 62 F.4th 755 (3d Cir. 2023). The plaintiff, a healthcare clinician, filed a collective action alleging that the defendant maintained a policy regarding productivity minimums and PTO deductions that violated the FLSA. The defendant filed a motion for summary judgment, and the district court granted the motion. On appeal, the Third Circuit affirmed the district court ’ s ruling. The defendant utilized a compensation system for clinicians that paid them a salary, and provided additional compensation when they exceeded specific productivity minimums. However, if the employees failed to meet the productivity minimum, the defendant withdrew from their available PTO to supplement the difference between the points they were expected to earn and what they actually earned. The district court held that PTO is not part of an employee ’ s salary under the FLSA and granted summary judgment to the defendant. The Third Circuit explained that the text of the FLSA discussing salary states that “an exempt employee... receives the full salary for any week in which the employee performs any work without regard to the number of days or hours worked.” Id. at 761. The Third Circuit ruled that an employer would not violate those conditions by deducting from an employee ’ s PTO because, when an employer docks an employee ’ s PTO, but not base pay, the predetermined amount that the employee receives at the end of a pay period does not change. Id. Accordingly, the Third Circuit affirmed the district court ’ s ruling granting the defendant ’ s motion for summary judgment. Relying on attacking the merits of the plaintiff ’ s claims presents the substantial possibility that the court will ultimately disagree with the defendant, as was the case in Walters, et al. v. Professional Labor Group, LLC, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 179030 (S.D. Cal. Aug. 25, 2023). The plaintiff filed a collective action alleging that the defendant failed to pay construction workers for time spent traveling between client sites in violation of the FLSA. The defendant previously moved for summary judgment, claiming that their workers were only considered employees when actively working on a client ’ s site and that travel time did not count as worktime. The court rejected the motion, and granted the plaintiff ’ s motion for conditional certification of a collective action. The plaintiff thereafter filed a motion for summary judgment, and the court granted the motion. The defendant argued that the workday only began at the client ’ s job site. The court rejected this argument. It emphasized that the workday is determined by an employee ’ s typical work hours and not solely by their presence at a job site. The court opined that an employee ’ s status did not switch on and off with presence at a jobsite, so neither did an employee ’ s workday begin and end with presence there. The court granted the plaintiff ’ s motion for summary judgment, and stated that the defendant must consider employee travel to overnight work assignments as compensable worktime when it occurs during normal work hours. The ruling Provencher, et al. v. Bimbo Bakeries USA, Inc ., 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 215566 (D. Vt. Dec. 4, 2023), this past year addressed the issue of an employer’s counterclaim in a class and collective action under the FLSA. The plaintiffs, a group of distributors of the defendant’s products, filed a class and collective action alleging that the defendant misclassified distributors as independent contractors and thereby failed to pay overtime compensation in violation of the FLSA and the Vermont Employment Practices Act. The defendant filed a motion for judgment on the pleadings regarding the Vermont labor law claim and asserted a counterclaim for unjust enrichment. The plaintiffs, as well as the Department of Labor (DOL), which intervened in the action, filed motions to dismiss the counterclaim. The court denied the defendant’s motion for judgment on the pleadings and granted the motion to dismiss filed by the plaintiffs and the DOL relative to the counterclaim. The defendant argued that distributors must prove they were employees and paid wages for services rendered to succeed in their improper wage deductions claim. The defendant further asserted that since the distributors were subject to distributor agreements that allowed them to delegate the services and negotiate their own payments, the payments were not tied to services rendered and were not “wages” for services rendered. Id . at *9. The court found that the plaintiffs sufficiently alleged that the compensation paid by the defendant was for the services provided and that further factual development would be needed to determine the answer to the question of whether the plaintiffs were paid “wages.” Id . at *14. Accordingly, the court denied the defendant’s motion for judgment on the pleadings. The defendant also brought a counterclaim against the plaintiffs, arguing that the plaintiffs should be considered independent contractors, but if the plaintiffs were considered employees, they should repay the defendant for various benefits received as independent contractors, including
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Wage & Hour Class And Collective Action Review – 2024
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