Real Life Employment Law
Question: We operate a warehouse in Minnesota where the employees work two weeks on / two weeks off. They work 10 hours per day, 7 days per week when they’re on at an hourly rate of $30. The employees also ordinarily receive a non-discretionary year-end bonus of 10% of total compensation, which is meant to compensate them both for their...
Question: Our company awards prizes at holiday parties and, from-time-to-time, at employee appreciation events. The prizes range from company logo t-shirts to $50 gift cards and cameras worth about $125. Do we need to report any of these items as compensation on Form W-2 for the employees who win these prizes?
Question: We are a large Minnesota employer and we have a non-exempt employee who is asking for breaks to express her breast milk multiple times every day, and each break takes a long time. We let her do so in her office, and she tapes a “not available” note across the window on her office door, but the door doesn’t...
Question: We have an employee who is claiming that he should be paid for time cleaning up his work station after logging out of our electronic time keeping system each night. Literally, he spends one or two minutes straightening his piles of paper and on other trivial similar tasks. Another company HR representative said that every minute an employee spends...
Question: We have offices in 13 states, a headquarters in Iowa and a manufacturing facility in Alaska. Several employees have used our “open suggestion box” to request that we allow them to work through lunch so they can go home earlier. I am aware of California’s unique laws which require that non-exempt employees be offered meal periods of at least...
Question: Each year, we provide our employees with a Christmas bonus of varying amounts. We’ve always done this because we want to reward our employees for a hard year of work and also spread a bit of holiday cheer. We were recently told by someone that we may have to pay additional overtime wages if we keep giving our employees...
Question: We are a New York employer. We had an outside vendor doing our payroll and we recently discovered several of our employees were overpaid three months in a row. Is there anything we can do other than get the employees’ agreement to make a deduction to recoup the overpayments? I seem to recall that many states, California comes to...
Question: I am a Human Resources representative of an independent for-profit company that publishes multiple travel and vacation magazines. Some of my company’s executives have expressed an interest in hiring interns for next summer and for a possible year-round program, if the program is successful. Currently, we aren’t sure what we would like our interns to do exactly but one...
Question: I run a restaurant chain that operates in different states, and I’m about to open my first location in Minnesota. We generally ask our servers to share a portion of their tips with bussers. We also include mandatory charges for large groups. I’ve heard the rules surrounding tips and service charges are quite unique in Minnesota. Is there anything...
Question: We recently made an offer to an applicant for an important job at our company. The offer was conditioned on a satisfactory background check and her passing our standard drug test. She had no problem with the drug test. But, when we did the background check, we discovered that she had sued her former employer for violations of the...
Jack SullivanJack is a Partner in Dorsey’s Labor & Employment group, where he focuses his practice on employment advice, litigation, and traditional labor-law issues. In his advice practice, Jack helps clients avoid litigation and position themselves effectively in case an employee does bring a claim. When counseling employers, Jack draws both from his legal experience and from the practical experience gained in his first career as a print reporter and newsroom manager, including service as a regional correspondent for The Associated Press in Washington, D.C., as a reporter and editor for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead, and as the manager and editor of a suburban news team for the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
Ieva AubinAs an employment and business immigration attorney, ...
Rebecca BernhardRebecca's experience spans traditional labor...
Marilyn ClarkA Partner in the Labor & Employment practice gr...
Michael DrokeMike started his career as a client, not a lawyer...
Aaron GoldsteinAaron is a Partner in Dorsey’s Labor & Employ...
Jillian KornblattJillian is a Partner in Dorsey’s Labor & Employ...
Laura LestradeLaura began practicing at Dorsey in 1992 and has s...
Jessica LinehanJessica is a Partner in the Labor and Employment gr...
JoLynn MarkisonJo is a Partner in Dorsey’s Labor & Employment Gr...
Ryan MickFor more than a decade, Ryan has counseled corpo...
Melissa RaphanMelissa is a Partner in Dorsey’s Labor and Employ...
Robert WebberBob has 20+ years of experience hand...
Gabrielle WirthEmployers turn to Gabrielle for guidance on how they...