Dick's Sporting Goods, Inc., has reached a tentative settlement agreement involving employees and former employees who allege the company did not pay them for overtime hours worked, and that management at the stores ordered them to work through scheduled breaks.

New York Governor David Paterson on Dec. 13 signed into law the Wage Theft Prevention Act (S.8380/A.11726), which seeks to ensure that employers pay statutorily mandated minimum wages and overtime. The law requires annual notifications of wages, expands those notifications, enhances available remedies for wage law violations and strengthens whistleblower protections.

In a time of widespread joblessness, Mexicans in New York have proved unusually adept at finding and keeping work. Of the city's 10 largest immigrant groups, they have the highest rate of employment and are more likely to hold a job than New York's native-born population, according to an analysis of the most recently available census data. That success, though, has a flip side. One reason Mexicans have found work in such numbers, experts say, is that many are illegal immigrants, and less likely to report workplace abuses to the authorities.

The U.S. Department of Labor plans to hire 670 investigators next year to beef up enforcement of laws that protect workers from everything from unsafe working conditions to unfair wage practices.

Our firm has recently settled three significant FLSA cases on a class wide (collective action) basis, providing employees of those companies with back wages that they were wrongfully denied as a result of labor abuses. While each company's labor violations differed slightly, each involved a common theme we continue to see in these labor abuse cases. That common theme is where employers intentionally misclassify employees as managers and independent contractors in order to escape paying overtime pay.