Employment

Employment law is complex. There is a maize of mandatory procedural laws & rules required to successfully  navigate an employment law claim through.

An experienced & knowledgeable employment lawyer is a must.  Question your prospective attorney carefully to see if he is experienced and knowledgeable in handling these complex and difficult cases.

• Employment law is one of the most complex branches of law.


• There is no one place one can look to find all the laws that might be involved in a specific case.
• It is a maze of different state and federal laws, statutes, administrative rules, and decisions by Louisiana State courts, Federal Courts and administrative agencies.

Often employment laws fail to even “kick in” unless the employer has a minimum threshold level of employees.
  
   Some sources of employment law to keep in mind.

• Federal constitution (usually only as to state public sector or federal employees and employers).
• State constitution (usually only as to state and local government employees and employers).
• Federal statutes such as Title VII, Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), and so on. Workers’ Compensation Act.
• Louisiana generally has statutes & case law that are similar to the federal statutes, but similar does not mean exactly the same.
• Federal administrative regulations or rules adopted by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Department of Labor (DOL), and other agencies.
• Federal court decisions.
• State court decisions.
• Contracts between employers and employees.
• Collective bargaining agreements between unions and employers.

WAGE & OVERTIME CLAIMS

It is extremely common to find that a company is not calculating paychecks & payroll & benefits correctly especially when it comes to overtime or “Off clock” time, such as travel time but not on payroll, or not including overtime pay in travel time, or having the employee spend time donning safety or other gear at the work site, but not allowing him to clock in until he has all the gear in place.

Once an employee reports to work on time, anything he is required to do on the job site to prepare for work before he can clock in is on company time, not the employees!

In other areas employees are commonly misclassified as some sort of “assistant management to make them salaried or even deemed “Independent contractors” when they clearly, under the law, are regular employes.
From some of the largest companies in the World to Mom and POp operations have done this for years to shortchange their workers in order to avoid overtime or even matching and withholding of taxes and benefits.

In most cases the employee has no idea she is being shortchanged in her paycheck, or, not knowing any better agrees with the financial arrangements in order to get or keep their job.

The law however is mandatory in these areas and often provides for a claim to be made for twice the money owed, as penalty plus attorney fees. THi is true even if the employee agreed with the arrangement all along.

If you think you are owed more than you are receiving, you should have you situation reviewed by an experienced and knowledgeable Wage & Employment Lawyer.