Source: https://www.californiawagelaw.com/wage_law/mcleseminars/
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 04:46:50+00:00

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ACI is presenting its 19th National Forum on Wage & Hour Claims and Class Actions on Wage & Hour Claims and Class Actions September 30 and October 1, 2013 in SAan Francisco. The conference takes place at the Omni. We aren't a media partner for this one, so no discount.
On June 6, 2013, the State Bar Labor & Employment Law Section will be presenting a Webinar entitled The Never-Ending Story – Arbitration Agreements and the Law. The program runs from 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. and offers 1.5 hours of participatory MCLE credits. The cost is $82.50. Advance registration is required and can be done at this link.
The wage & hour landscape has been turned upside down post-Wal-Mart v. Dukes and AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion. Your colleagues and clients will be in Miami in late January to hone their skills and knowledge needed to succeed in this rapidly expanding and evolving area of law, adapt to emerging regulations and changing enforcement priorities, and respond new and innovative claims. Join them to ensure that you are prepared to navigate and defend against the leading type of class action in the country.
The sheer number of wage and hour claims and class actions across the country is staggering. Wage and hour class actions are the leading type of class action nationwide – and by a large margin. With so many of these cases getting certified and succeeding at trial, compliance and prevention are equally important to trial strategy. The Obama administration continues to send a strong signal that it is making wage and hour enforcement a priority, and it is clear that preventing, managing, and defending these claims remains a key issue for companies across the nation.
We've been to this seminar before, and it was a valuable experience. It's good for 12.25 hours of California MCLE credits, plus another 2 hours for each workshop (with workshop B counting toward ethics).
We've agreed to be one of ACI's media partners for this conference so that our readers can get a $200 discount off the current price tier. Use discount code WLB 200. Register by Thursday (November 17, 2011) for early bird pricing. Rates increase after November 17 and after January 5. The walk-up price for this conference is $2,295 (additional registration fees apply for the two workshops), but as a Wage Law reader, if you act by November 17, 2011, you can get in for $1,795.
Bridgeport Education's 2012 Wage & Hour Litigation and Management Conference will be December 13-14 at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel, located at 404 S. Figueroa St. Los Angeles. We've seen this conference before, both as speakers and as attendees. It's usually very good.
Unfortunately, we don't have a discount code for readers for this one.
ACI is hosting another International Labor and Employment Conference in New York City on October 29-30th, 2012.
Best practices for risk management and training for foreign nationals working in the U.S.
Email us at admin@walshandwalshpc.com for discount codes.
Brinker has been heard and the landscape of wage & hour litigation has changed in the aftermath of AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion and Dukes v. Wal-Mart. Bridgeport’s Annual Wage & Hour program explores in-depth the critical aspects of Wage & Hour litigation with a focus on current practice. The two day program explores in detail the critical aspects of Wage & Hour litigation in both the single case and class action context. The well-balanced program offers the perspective of very experienced litigators. This two day program is chaired by Arthur Silbergeld of Dickstein Shapiro and Aashish Desai of Mower, Carreon & Desai.
Bridgeport's Annual Mid-Year Wage & Hour Litigation Conference will be held June 3, 2011 at the Westin San Diego. I've been to this program before, and have presented a few times, and I've always come away with some valuable new insights. The presentations this time will include recent trends and cases, derivative claims, PAGA and 17200 claims, recent developments in class certification, and strategies for settlement of individual and class actions in wage & hour cases. Expect a lot of discussion of the recent AT&T v. Concepcion case. For more information or to register, visit Bridgeport's website.
There is a free one hour teleseminar on Thursday, May 19, 2011, and again on Friday, May 20, 2011, put on by the Public Justice Foundation, concerning the implications of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion. The seminar will address issues relevant to attorneys advocating for the class. If you represent plaintiffs in consumer or employment class actions and you would like more information about this seminar, email me at michaeljwalshesq@aol.com.
Bridgeport Education's 2010 Wage & Hour Conference is set for October 7 and 8, 2010, in San Francisco at the Hyatt Regency, located at 5 Embarcadero. Topics will include recent developments, hybrid FLSA - state law collective and class actionsm, class certification, Brinker, discovery, independent contractor classification, arbitration, mediation and settlement of individual and classwide wage and hour claims.The programs are usually pretty good. For further information, or to register, clink on this link or call (818) 783-7156.
Why do women still earn so much less than men? Why is the gender wage gap significantly worse in Pittsburgh and Southwestern Pennsylvania? What new legal and policy strategies might help to address these persistent inequalities? Nationally recognized scholars in law, economics, and public policy will address these questions, with responses by state and local political and nonprofit leaders and by a panel of prominent women graduates of the University of Pittsburgh College of General Studies.
With the enactment of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, the topic is timely, so if you need to get back up to speed on equal pay issues, or you've just been looking for an excuse to take a tax-deductible trip to Pittsburgh in the middle of winter, check it out.
There will be a full day Wage & Hour Seminar presented by the U.S. Department of Labor in two weeks, sponsored by Workforce Development and Continuing Education The University of Akron. The good news: It's cheap - $35. The bad news: It's in Akron, Ohio. But surely some of you are looking for an excuse to take a tax-deductible trip to Ohio in February, right?
When: February 20, 2009, 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Where: Student Union, Room 312, University of Akron, Akron, OH 44325-4104.
To register, download this form and send it in.
The seminar is presented by Consumer Attorneys of California College of Trial Arts and the San Francisco Trial Lawyers Association, sponsered by Gilardi & Company LLC and co-sponsored by the Bar Association of San Francisco and The Impact Fund. Attendees will received four hours of MCLE credit, including one hour of ethics. For a printable registration form, download the PDF at this link, or register online at this link.
The NELA 2009 Annual Convention will be held June 24-27, 2009 in Rancho Mirage, California at the the Westin Mission Hills Resort. This will be NELA's 20th Annual Convention. The two previous conventions were in San Juan, PR and Atlanta, GA. If you are a California lawyer, this is probably an easy road trip for you.
The speaker will be Michael Gray, from Jones Day's Chicago Office. The program costs $199. Extra listeners are free. You can register online or by calling 800-859-8676.
Old and Busted: Brinker. New Hotness: Brinkley.
Plaintiff asserts class action and individual claims for violations of the Labor Code. He alleges that defendant, his former employer, provided paystubs containing misstatements in violation of Labor Code section 226. An employer, however, cannot be liable for misstatements on paystubs unless it knowingly and intentionally makes such misstatements and an employee suffers injury as a result. Plaintiff cannot prove either element in this case.
Plaintiff also asserts causes of action based on section 226.7 on the ground that defendant failed to ensure that plaintiff and other class members took all meal periods and rest periods they were entitled to take. California law, however, only requires that employers make available such periods, which defendant did here.
We affirm the trial court’s order granting defendant summary adjudication with respect to plaintiff’s section 226 and section 226.7 causes of action.
On the more interesting issue concerning meal periods, the court followed White v. Starbucks Corp. (N.D.Cal. 2007) 497 F.Supp.2d 1080, 1089, while attempting to reconcile itself with Cicairos.
The court noted that it would be impossible for employers with large work forces to enforce such meal breaks. (Ibid.) It further stated that “employees would be able to manipulate the process and manufacture claims by skipping breaks or taking breaks of fewer than 30 minutes, entitling them to compensation of one hour of pay for each violation.[ ] This cannot have been the intent of the California Legislature, and the court declines to find a rule that would create such perverse and incoherent incentives.” (Id. at p. 1089.) We agree with this analysis.
The court doesn't explain how it came to the conclusion that an employer with a large work force would find it impossible to schedule enforceable meal periods any more than it finds it impossible to schedule starting and quitting times for its employees, but in so doing, it found no triable issue of material fact as to whether the employer had met its burden.
The court also weighed in on the issue of meal period timing, stating that there is nothing in the law that mandates that a meal period occur "within the first five hours" of a shift.
Plaintiff argues that California law requires defendant to provide meal periods within the first five hours of a shift. We disagree. Nothing in the applicable statutes or wage order supports plaintiff’s position.
In the present case, defendant produced substantial evidence that the employer provided meal periods to plaintiff and other meal period subclass members. Defendant showed that (1) defendant had a written policy providing for meal periods; (2) plaintiff and other managers were aware of this policy; (3) defendant reprimanded employees for not taking meal periods; and (4) defendant advised plaintiff and others at a meeting that they were required to take lunch and rest breaks. Defendant also produced 21 declarations of managers who worked for defendant. Each of these managers stated that they were allowed to take meal periods at their own discretion.
Similar evidentiary issues plagued the plaintiff class's certified claims for rest period violations.
In other words, don't just say you can't take a break. Tell the court specifically why you can't take a break, so that the court can decide whether the employer is to blame.
Defendant met its burden of production by filing a declaration stating that the misstatement of the associated mileage rate was inadvertent and, when discovered, corrected. This evidence showed that plaintiff could not establish an essential element of his claim, namely that defendant intentionally and knowingly failed to provide required information on its paystubs. The burden of production thus shifted to plaintiff. Plaintiff, however, produced no evidence of knowing or intentional conduct by defendant.
With respect to the second element, the court distinguished Brinkley's claims with those in Wang v. Chinese Daily News, Inc. (C.D.Cal. 2006) 435 F.Supp.2d 1042, which continues to stand as a good example of how a paystub violation can cause actual injury.
Plaintiff argues that the receipt of an inaccurate paystub ipso facto constitutes injury within the meaning of section 226, subdivision (e). This interpretation, however, renders the words “suffering injury” surplusage and meaningless. Such an interpretation is disfavored. (Jones v. The Lodge at Torrey Pines Partnership (2008) 42 Cal.4th 1158, 1184.) We hold that section 226 means what it says: a plaintiff must actually suffer injury to recover damages or statutory penalties. The present case is distinguishable from Wang v. Chinese Daily News, Inc. (C.D.Cal. 2006) 435 F.Supp.2d 1042. In Wang, the paystubs stated that the employees worked 86.66 hours regardless of the number of hours actually worked, the length of the pay period, or the number of work days in the pay period. This caused the employees to suffer injury because they might not be paid for overtime work to which they were entitled and they had no way of challenging the overtime rate paid by the employer. (Id. at p. 1050.) Here, by contrast, plaintiff was not underpaid or given insufficient information to challenge the payments he received. This inadvertent technical violation of section 226 caused no resulting damages.
You can download Brinkley here in pdf or MS Word format. Mark your calendars for the last week in January, when the Supreme Court is likely to issue a "grant and hold" review order, deeming this a related case to Brinker Restaurant Corp. v. Superior Court.
This one-and a half day program explores in-depth the critical aspects of Wage & Hour litigation with a focus on California and important cases such as Brinker, Sav-On, Gentry, Starbucks, Oracle and Kenneth Cole. Don't miss it!
Who Should Attend? This program is designed for both plaintiff and defense counsel and corporate counsel, litigators, counseling attorneys, insurance experts and litigation managers. The program will address Wage & Hour Litigation in the class action and non class action context.
To register, call Bridgeport at (818) 783-7156, or download and mail the registration form, or register online. If you are going to attend, drop us a note. Mark and I would love to meet you.
Next week in San Francisco, the American Conference Institute presents its annual Wage and Hour Litigation Conference at the Sheraton Fisherman’s Wharf. The main conference is October 28-29, 2008, with a Fundamentals of Wage and Hour Law workshop beforehand, on October 27. You can request a brochure in PDF at this link. The cost of the seminar is $2,195, with another $600 if you want to attend the workshop. We've attended this seminar before. The materials are good, most of the speakers are good. However, the defense lawyers speaking at ACI seminars sometimes hold back when they see plaintiff's attorneys in the crowd, and we've actually seen a speaker, at an ACI seminar concerning the defense of wage and hour class actions, respond to questions by agreeing to answer later in private, so that the information isn't heard by the plaintiff's lawyers in attendance.
Are Unpaid Interns Entitled to Minimum Wage?
Do you have interns? Or do you have a group of young employees who are being denied minimum wage? The answer might be more complex than you think, according to this recent article in the California Lawyer.
The State Bar Labor & Employment section is hosting a one hour telephone seminar on Friday entitled "Brinker: the End of California Meal and Rest Break Litigation or Only the Beginning?" The speakers will be William Sailer and Miles Locker, who argued Brinker as amicus for the respective sides. William Sailer is Senior VP and Legal Counsel for Qualcomm Inc. and served as amicus counsel on behalf of the employer. Miles Locker is former DLSE Chief Counsel and served as amicus counsel for the employees. The seminar costs $45 and is good for one hour of MCLE credit. For further information or to register, check out this link.

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