Access To Justice

Discrimination claims filed under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) hit an all-time high last year with around 21,500 ADA-related charges filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

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The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is warning employers that refusing to hire workers based on bad credit reports or criminal records may be illegal in some cases if the job-screening practice disproportionately impacts racial minorities.

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Health care pay practices are under scrutiny by the federal government amid findings that some hospitals and nursing homes fail to pay overtime to nurses and other workers who clock more than 40 hours a week on the job.

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The California Supreme Court ruled unanimously that an age discrimination case filed against search engine giant Google by a former manager Brian Reid can go forward, rejecting a lower court ruling that there wasn’t sufficient evidence. The justices said “stray remarks” from colleagues about Reid’s age should have been considered by the trial judge.

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U.S. Rep. Linda Sanchez  (D-Calif.)  introduced a new bill this week that promises to expand the wage and overtime protections of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to home care workers who assist the elderly and the sick with health and other at-home services.

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Nutritional supplement maker Sabinsa Corp. has been fined more than $11,000 by Utah regulators for workplace safety violations that exposed workers to dust from the supplements they were mixing, according to the Associated Press.

The AP reports that the Utah Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued the fine and 15 safety citations against the company after looking into the January death of a 29-year-old Sabinsa worker who claimed to have been poisoned by selenium powder he handled while working without a respirator.  Sabinsa manufactures herbal extracts and chemicals for the food, nutritional, and pharma industries.

Utah regulators hit Sabinsa with the fine and citations in June for paperwork lapses, electrical hazards and failure to train workers to properly fit and use respirators, among other violations of safety procedures, according to the AP.

Millions of workers are injured on the job every year. If you have been injured in the workplace, we may be able to help.

New York may soon be the first state to establish overtime pay and other worker rights for domestic laborers such as nannies, maids, and housekeepers.

A pair of measures passed by New York lawmakers will give more than 200,000 nannies and other household workers in the state the right to overtime pay after eight-hour workdays and a weekly day off once the bills are reconciled and signed into law by NY Gov. David Paterson, reports the Associated Press. Casual workers like baby sitters and occasional house cleaners are not covered by the legislation.

Domestic workers, most of whom are female emigres, are sometimes taken advantage of by their employers with regards to worker rights. The AP reports that a study by advocacy group Domestic Workers United found that two-thirds of respondents never received overtime pay.

If you have a loved one who is sick, or a child who needs you to be home to care for them, you might think that you’re rights are protected by the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA).   But it turns out that the FMLA which is supposed to protect workers is violated all the time by employers seeking to skirt its requirements.

In fact, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, in one year alone, they received 1,983 complaints of employees treated unfairly under the FMLA. Of those, 1,087 were found to be true violations resulting in $1.5 million in back wages for the workers. The primary violation found was that people who tried to take leave for family reasons were wrongfully terminated.

At Sokolove Law, our mission is to provide access to the civil justice system and help those who have been harmed to exercise their legal rights.  These are the people we’re talking about—someone  who loses their job simply because their employer refuses to grant them leave to care for a sick family member, or support a pregnant spouse.

The good news is that the FMLA is pretty clear cut.

The FMLA permits eligible employees to take up to a total of 12 work weeks of unpaid leave during any 12 month period for one or more of the following reasons:

• Birth and care of a newborn child of the employee
• Placement with the employee of a child for adoption or foster care
• Care of a spouse, child or parent with a serious health condition
• Serious health condition of the employee

In January 2009, the FMLA was amended to include employees who take a leave because of any qualifying exigency relating to the active duty or call to active duty of a spouse, child or parent.

Employers are required to continue to provide benefits and to reinstate the employee to their old job or an equivalent one when they return.

Unfortunately employers either don’t grant the leave, or fail to reinstate the employee. In the worst circumstances, they actually terminate the employee allegedly for “cause” which is very often not the case.

Employees who are wrongfully terminated have rights under the FMLA.  If you or someone you know thinks you’ve been the victim of a violation of this important law, please click here for more information or feel free to share your thoughts below.

Low-wage workers already among the more vulnerable members of society are often exploited by their employers, denied overtime pay, and paid less than minimum wage according to a new study.

According to a survey of low wage workers in major American cities, 68% had experienced some kind of pay violation in the last week, and the typical worker had been denied up to 15% of the compensation that they were rightfully entitled to.

The survey of 4,387 workers in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York found that 26 percent of those surveyed had been paid less than minimum wage, and 76% had worked overtime the week before and had not been paid for it.

Fully 57% of those surveyed had not received proper documentation from their employers, and 12% of those who received tips said that they had tips stolen from them by employers. One in five workers reported having lodged some kind of employment complaint, and 43% of those said they had faced some kind of retaliation like firing or suspension.

Sometimes it takes a study to tell us what we already know to be true.  Low wage workers are among the most vulnerable members of our society and not surprisingly they have little leverage when their employers seek to skirt the law and pay them even less than the minimum wage, or refuse to pay overtime.

When you consider that the median wage of those surveyed in this study was $8.02 per hour, you realize just how unbelievable these statistics are.  Government can pass the laws, but when the laws are not enforced or when people blatantly ignore the law, we need a strong civil justice system to act as a final safety net.  If you know someone who is the victim of abuse by their employer, please tell them to learn about their legal rights.  Click here to find out more information.