Employee lawsuits overview:
- Who: Employees recently filed lawsuits against Spirit Airlines, Elon Musk and X, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
- Why: The lawsuits involve claims concerning hours worked, severance pay and discrimination against Black and Hispanic workers.
- Where: The lawsuits affect employees nationwide.
Employees filed a trio of lawsuits and/or updates against their employers, including a new claim, a settlement agreement and a motion to dismiss.
Workers may choose to file a complaint against their employer if they believe they have been mistreated or improperly compensated, among other possible reasons.
Spirit Airlines shortchanged workers on FMLA hours, class action says
An employee filed a class action lawsuit against Spirit Airlines earlier this month, arguing it fails to include all hours when calculating Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) accruals.
Spirit is accused of not counting all the hours their employees are required to work, including pre- and post-flight time requirements for flight attendants, towards their accruals under the FMLA.
The worker claims Spirit requires its workers to accrue 520 credit hours to be eligible for FMLA, despite the law allegedly only requiring 504 duty hours to obtain eligibility.
Further, Spirit is accused of only counting the time from when an airplane leaves the gate until the time it arrives at its next gate toward workers’ credit hours.
“As a result of these unlawful policies and practices, Spirit regularly interferes with, restrains or denies the exercise of or the attempt to exercise the FMLA benefits by (flight attendants),” the Spirit class action states.
Elon Musk asks court to dismiss claims he, X misled terminated employees about severance pay
Elon Musk asked a Delaware federal court to dismiss a complaint filed against him and social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, earlier this month, calling the claims “purely conclusory and threadbare.”
Musk and X are accused of misleading employees the company terminated after Musk took over in Oct. 2022 and failing to pay them at least $500 million in severance they were allegedly promised.
Musk, meanwhile, argues he cannot be held personally liable for claims against him because he has not been personally accused of having made any misrepresentations about the severance benefits.
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to pay $6M to end discrimination claims
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) agreed to pay $6 million earlier this month to end claims it discriminated against and retaliated against Black and Hispanic employees.
The settlement, if approved, would benefit a class of Black and Hispanic workers who served in certain nonsupervisory positions assigned to the Office of Consumer Response in certain pay bands from Feb. 13, 2011, and April 19, 2022.
The agency was accused of violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. A total of 85 Black and Hispanic class members are eligible for monetary compensation, pending approval of the settlement.
DOL proposes raising salary threshold for OT; gender pay gap shrinks
In other labor news, the Department of Labor proposed new rules earlier this month that would raise the salary threshold for overtime eligibility.
The agency’s Wage and Hour Division says it is concerned the salary range needed to qualify for exemption from overtime rules is too low to ensure it would be able to differentiate between exempt and non-exempt workers.
Under the proposed labor rules, the standard salary level for full-time workers would be raised from $35,568 per year to around $55,000 per year.
Additionally, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released data in September that showed the pay gap between men and women in the workforce is the lowest it has ever been on record.
Current data, which the government has collected since 1979, showed women in the workforce make around 84% of the median income of men.
In addition to a decreasing gender pay gap, the gap between men and women in the workforce in general has sunk to a record low of 10.5%, according to the report.
Have you been affected by a recent employee lawsuit? Let us know in the comments.
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