May 2011 Archives

Bath and Body Works' 1,600 store subsidiary Limited Brands Inc. announced last week that its current CEO will be leaving the company, after four years, at the end of the summer to work as an adviser from San Francisco. Limited Brands Inc. also announced the name of the replacement, who formerly served as the president of Lands End, a Sears Brand.

The question presented to the U.S. Supreme Court in Kasten v. Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics Corp., 79 U.S.L.W. 4179 (U.S. Mar. 22, 2011), was whether an employees who makes an oral complaint about what the employee perceives to be a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) is protected from retaliation by the company for having made the complaint. The Supreme Court answered in the affirmative, holding that employees who make oral complaints
about violations of the FLSA are entitled to be free from retaliation in the same manner as if their complaints were filed in writing.This is an important ruling because many courts across the U.S. previously had extended anti-retaliation protection only to employees who had made written
complaints. The law involved in the case, the FLSA, affects many millions of workers because it is the federal law that mandates how hourly employees are paid for regular time and overtime hours. Disputes by employees over the number of hours worked and the wages paid for the hours worked are routine. It is common for workers to look at their paychecks, scratch their heads, and think that they worked more hours than they were paid. Not Paid for Changing Into, Out of Workclothes. Kevin Kasten was paid hourly for his work at a Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics Corp., a Portage, W.I., plastics manufacturing plant. Each day he arrived at work, Kasten walked in the door and then entered a locker room, where he changed out of his clothes and put on his work related protective gear. Then, he exited the locker room, clocked in, and began work. He followed this sequence because of where the company placed the timeclock. It was not located at the entrance to the building or before he entered the locker room. When his workday ended, Kasten left his work area, clocked out, entered the locker room, changed out of his work clothes, and went home. Again, he followed this sequence because of where the company placed the timeclock. At the end of each week the company tallied his hours from the timeclock and paid his hourly wages in accordance with what his time cards stated. Missing from those time cards was the time Kasten and other employees spent changing into, and out of, their work clothes.The FLSA states that employees should be compensated for time spent changing into and out of their work clothes; but the company's placement of its timeclock made that impossible. That meant that Kasten and other workers in the factory who had to change into and out of protective gear, were not compensated for their additional time. Verbal Complaint Made. Kasten determined that the timeclock's location at the factory led to workers being made to work off the clock in violation of the FLSA, and verbally complained on several occasions. However, the company later terminated his employment, contending that it fired Kasten after he did not properly record his time and attendance on the timeclock despite having been given numerous warnings about it.

At Yankee Stadium, a 20 percent service charge is added to menu prices for each item. Whether that's an ice cold beer, a snow cone, or a good old fashioned hot dog, every items purchased is marked up with a 20 percent service charge.

Desperate Housewives star Nicollette Sheridan is currently in the midst of a firing suit against ABC and creator and executive producer Marc Cherry.