Federal and state laws require most employers to pay overtime. The overtime premium is 50% of the employee’s usual hourly wage. This means an employee who works overtime must be paid “time and a half” — the employee’s usual hourly wage plus the 50% overtime premium — for every overtime hour worked. These laws contain…

A recent article in Newsweek discussed the continuing pay gap between men and women, and suggested some reasons why women still make less than their male colleagues. Another recent story discussed how female doctors are paid less than male doctors. I’m not going to argue here whether or not the pay gap is real. Instead,…

Michelle Edwards says she called in one hour late to work, telling her boss she needed to care for her mother, recovering from surgery. But the boss’ response was that she was already fired for “no call, no show,” according to the lawsuit Edwards filed against her employer, Advanced Temporaries Inc. Which raises the question:…

HICAGO — The U.S. Department of Labor has found Norfolk Southern Railway Co. violated federal whistleblower protections in the dismissals of 2 employees who reported workplace injuries. The Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration ordered the company to pay the workers more than $932,000 in damages. An assistant secretary of labor, David Michaels, said Tuesday…

WASHINGTON (AP) — It started with allegations of hangman’s nooses, graffiti and racist comments targeting a handful of black workers at a trucking company warehouse in Chicago Ridge, Ill. Four years later, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had turned the case into a major class action lawsuit alleging more than 170 employees of Yellow Transportation…