High-quality advocacy for employee rights.

If you have been treated differently in the workplace on the basis of age, gender, race, religion, national origin, or sexual orientation, you have legal recourse. This counts as discrimination against a protected status. You may even have experienced harassment on top of it or experienced other forms of harassment that can be sexual or retaliatory in nature. Employers are not allowed to take retaliatory action against an employee who has reported suspected illegal activity or non-compliance with certain policies.

Are you part of a group of individuals who have suffered similar losses or injuries? This can be a workplace accident involving several employees and/or contractors, or an incident to do with a product that concerns multiple consumers. You may think that it’s not worth it or have been advised against legal action on your own because the expected compensation is low or the case is complex. However, when a group of individuals pursues a collective claim under class action because they have been similarly affected, this shifts the balance in your favor. Class actions can consist of up to hundreds and thousands of people.

There are many issues regarding overtime in the United States, partly because employees above a specific job designation do not qualify for overtime. One common issue is the misclassification of employees: for instance, you are given a job title that does not correspond to your duties and responsibilities and as a result, you are not entitled to overtime pay.

Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FSLA), eligible employees who work over 40 hours a week are entitled to overtime pay. Another issue you may have with overtime is that your employer redistributes the number of hours you have worked into another week. If you have worked 30 hours in one week and 50 hours the next, you are entitled to 10 hours of overtime pay in the second week. Your employer cannot redistribute these 10 hours into the first week.

Although federal law does not mandate lunch or coffee breaks, many employees are given breaks throughout the course of their workday, especially if they are working long hours. There is a distinction between meal and rest breaks. Meal breaks last at least 30 minutes and are not compensable or counted under your working hours. Rest breaks can range anywhere between 5 to 20 minutes and are to be considered paid work time. If an employee extends his rest break without authorization from the employer and despite clear communication that it should only last for a fixed period of time, the employer has the right not to count it as part of working hours.

Unpaid wages are also known as withheld wages, and there are numerous different cases including:

• Not paying for all services provided
• Misclassifying employees so that they qualify for a lower pay rate
• Failing to pay overtime wages
• Failing to adhere to minimum wage requirements
• Withholding of agreed-upon benefits

Employees should always keep their own record of hours worked and if they notice anything amiss with their payslips, notify their employer immediately. Sometimes, it can be due to an administrative mistake instead of an unwillingness to pay. Such cases can be sorted out amicably, however, if the employer refuses to do so or deliberately withholds all or part of your pay, you have legal recourse.

Wrongful termination is also known as wrongful dismissal and wrongful discharge. There can be many reasons an employee gets terminated, however, when this reason goes against the law or the legally binding contract you signed, it is considered a case of wrongful termination. Below are some reasons for firing an employee that can be deemed wrongful:

• In retaliation against a whistleblowing action that they have taken against the employer
• On the basis of a protected status such as age, gender, race, religion, or national origin
• Noncompliance with a work order could potentially be illegal

When you were first employed, you would have signed a contract with your employer. This clearly states the valid reasons the employer can fire you.

Known formally as defamation of character, defamation is an act whereby one party makes a false statement that has the effect of damaging the affected party’s reputation. A written statement is classified as libel and an oral statement as slander. However, the lines between the two have become blurred due to the rise of the Internet. The focus has shifted to the permanence of the statement: for instance, a post on social media is likely to have longer-lasting and more far-reaching effects than an oral statement. The general rule to abide by is the more permanent the statement, the more potentially harmful it is to the victimized party.