Number Of Wage-And-Hour Lawsuits Continues To Rise For Fifth Straight Year

According to a recent analysis of data collected by the Federal Judicial Center, the number of employees filing wage-and-hour suits against their employers has skyrocketed over the past several decades. In fact, the numbers show that in the past 20 years the number of such employment lawsuits have risen 432 percent.

Numbers also reveal that the trend is not just over the long-term, even last year the number wage-and-hour lawsuits increased by 10 percent. The increase marks the fifth year in a row that the number of such lawsuits has risen, hitting 7,764 such suits in 2012 alone.

Generally, wage-and-hour cases can be broken down into three main categories. First, those salaried employees who think they are owed overtime pay for work for which they were never compensated. Second, hourly workers who argue that they were never paid for all the time they spent working. Third, restaurant workers who claim their bosses owe them for additional money under a provision of the Fair Labor Standards Act that deals with “tip credits.” So far the biggest increase in cases has been for those in the latter category.

Though the trend is clearly moving upward, many are unsure of the reasons behind the increase in litigation. Some believe it may indicate that the economy is gaining ground; this is because workers tend to be more afraid to raise such complaints in lean times for fear of losing their jobs. Another reason is that the use of social media has increased many people’s awareness of wage and hour issues. Behavior by an employer that might not have raised many eyebrows years ago has been given so much widespread attention thanks to the internet that employees are less likely to tolerate illegal conduct.

Another suggestion advanced by a worker advocate is that the suits are the result of a lack of enforcement efforts on the part of the Department of Labor. The logic goes that because the Department of Labor has not had the resources to ensure that employers comply with federal labor laws, employees have had no choice but to turn to lawsuits as a way of forcing their bosses to pay them what they are owed.

Recently, due to the recession, employers may have felt emboldened to try and squeeze even more money from employees, which could explain the recent spike in cases. Now that workers are slightly less afraid of losing their jobs, they feel secure enough to file wage-and-hour suits against their employers for the money they are rightfully owed. Examples include companies as diverse as Wal-Mart, Taco Bell and Bank of America, each of which was slapped with wage-and-hour lawsuits that arose during the recession.

Source: “Wage-and-Hour Suits Up for Fifth Straight Year,” by Catherine Dunn, published at Law.com.

Source: “Wage-And-Hour Lawsuits Jumped 432 Percent In The Last 20 Years,” by Jillian Berman, published at HuffingtonPost.com.

See Our Related Blog Posts:
Indianapolis Hotel Workers Settle Wage-and-Hour Suit
Increasing Number of Workers File Wage and Hour Complaints