Labor and Employment Insights
Analysis and practical guides on labor and employment.
56 articles, checklists, and guides on labor and employment law, written by the attorneys at MC Law. Every piece is general information, not legal advice—for a specific matter, contact the firm.
Wage Claim Toolkit: Hour Reconstruction, Demand Letters, and Agency Filings
This toolkit contains the worksheets and letters that build a wage claim, ordered from the habit that costs ten seconds a day to the agency filing. It includes a daily hours log, a pay stub audit worksheet, and a regular rate recalculation worksheet that exposes the violation appearing on no pay stub. It provides an exemption duties worksheet and a classification worksheet keyed to the tests that actually decide those questions, an hour reconstruction table with an evidence inventory, and a damages calculation including liquidated damages and state penalties. It then supplies a preservation letter, a written internal complaint, a classification inquiry, a demand letter, state and federal agency filings, a retaliation log, a final paycheck demand, a personnel records request, and an attorney consultation preparation sheet.
Wage Claim and Unpaid Overtime Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist runs a wage claim from the habit that costs ten seconds a day through the agency filing and collection. It opens with the daily hours log and the pay stub audit that catches the four most common violations, including the regular rate error that appears on no pay stub and is arithmetically certain once a bonus is identified. It sets out the salary basis and duties tests that decide exempt status, the classification tests that decide contractor status including the ABC prong that fails for anyone doing a company's core business, and the evidence that reconstructs hours when an employer kept no records. It covers the written complaint that creates a retaliation claim, the choice among forums and what each preserves, and the parties to name when the employer has no money.
Recovering Unpaid Wages: A Practical Guide
This guide is a sequence for a worker who suspects they are owed money, beginning with the habit that costs ten seconds a day and decides most claims. It explains how to reconstruct hours when the employer kept no records and why that absence helps rather than hurts, how to audit a pay stub for the four most common violations, and how to test an exemption against what you actually do rather than what your title says. It covers writing the complaint that converts a wage dispute into a wage-plus-retaliation dispute, choosing among the state labor agency, the federal Wage and Hour Division, and a private lawsuit, and what each route costs and preserves. It closes with the final paycheck penalties, collecting from an employer with no money, and what to do while still in the job.
Wage Theft and Unpaid Wages: Overtime, Misclassification, and Getting Paid
Wage theft is the largest category of theft in the United States by dollar value, and almost none of it is prosecuted. This article explains what the Fair Labor Standards Act actually requires—minimum wage, overtime at one and one-half times the regular rate, and a recordkeeping obligation that falls on the employer rather than the worker—and then the four ways employers most often avoid paying: misclassifying employees as exempt, misclassifying them as independent contractors, requiring work off the clock, and manipulating the regular rate. It covers the tip credit and tip pooling rules, meal and rest break law which is largely a state matter, and final paycheck requirements that carry penalties in many states. It closes with the remedies—liquidated damages doubling the recovery, a three-year limitations period for willful violations, fee shifting, and the anti-retaliation provision that is frequently the stronger claim.
Wage and Hour Self-Audit Checklist: A Practical Checklist
Most wage and hour exposure is created by a system configured once and never tested, not by a decision anyone made to underpay. The classifications were set when the roles were created, the payroll system was configured at implementation, and the rounding rule has run untouched for six years. This checklist tests each of them. It works through exempt classification against the duties test rather than the job description, the regular rate calculation that catches employers who pay overtime diligently and still get it wrong, timekeeping practices including rounding and automatic meal deductions and remote work, the compensability of travel and on-call and training time, contractor classification, deductions, and recordkeeping. It closes with quantifying an exposure and the choices available for remediation.
Unemployment Claim and Appeal Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist runs an unemployment claim from the day of separation through a hearing and an overpayment appeal. It is organized as sequences: the first forty-eight hours, the separation statement, the wage record, the fact-finding interview, weekly compliance, the appeal, hearing preparation, the hearing itself, and overpayments. Deadlines are flagged where they are short, which is nearly everywhere in this system. Both claimant and employer items are included, because the same hearing decides both. Use it with the accompanying article and guide.
Managing a Multistate Remote Workforce
A single employee working from a state where the company has no other presence makes that company a multistate employer subject to that state's entire employment regime, its tax registration requirements, and frequently its business income tax. Most companies discover this after the fact, one state at a time, through a notice. This guide covers the framework: why the employee's physical work location governs almost everything, the registrations that must be completed before the first paycheck, how payroll tax withholding and the convenience-of-the-employer rule interact across state lines, which wage and hour and leave obligations change by state, what happens to non-competes and pay transparency and expense reimbursement, and how to build a policy that controls where employees may work rather than discovering it later. It closes with the structural questions most companies never decide consciously—how many states to support, and whether to build the compliance function or buy it—and with a relocation checklist.
Employee Handbook Drafting Checklist: A Practical Checklist
An employee handbook is the most-read legal document most workers ever encounter, and a careless one quietly surrenders the at-will defense, violates federal labor law, or becomes Exhibit A in a discrimination suit. This checklist walks a drafter through the whole job in order: scoping and architecture, the at-will disclaimer and the implied-contract traps from Toussaint and Woolley, the load-bearing policies (EEO and anti-harassment built for the Faragher/Ellerth defense, ADA accommodation, FMLA and the wider leave landscape, wage-hour with an FLSA safe harbor, PTO, code of conduct, confidentiality), drafting work rules narrowly enough to survive the NLRB's Stericycle standard, the acknowledgment form, arbitration placement, the multistate maze, and a review cadence. Each phase pairs checkboxes with the WHY and the traps, plus common mistakes and primary authority. It closes with related mclaw.io resources.
Unemployment Insurance Toolkit: Separation Evidence, Hearings, and Overpayments
This toolkit provides the working papers of an unemployment claim for both sides: the request for a written reason for separation, separation statement templates for discharge and quit, the alternative base period and employment status requests, an employer response template, a fact-finding preparation sheet, work search and earnings logs, the appeal letter, subpoena and exhibit tools, a hearing outline with cross-examination scripts, the board of review argument, and the overpayment, fraud, waiver, and repayment letters. Each is annotated with the rule it invokes. State forms and deadlines vary, so adapt before filing.
Complying with Pay Transparency and Pay Equity Laws
Two related bodies of law now govern compensation. Pay equity statutes prohibit paying employees differently for comparable work absent a legitimate justification, and most state versions have broadened the comparison standard well beyond the federal equal-work test while narrowing the available defenses. Pay transparency statutes require employers to disclose pay ranges in job postings, to employees on request, and in some jurisdictions to report aggregate pay data to the state. This guide explains both, identifies where the state requirements differ in ways that matter operationally, walks through how to conduct a privileged pay audit and what to do with the results, and sets out the compensation infrastructure—job architecture, pay bands, documented criteria, and approval discipline—that makes compliance sustainable rather than a recurring emergency.
Remote Work Policy Checklist: A Practical Checklist
A remote work policy does two jobs. It sets expectations about how people work, which is a management question, and it controls where they work, which is a legal one—because an employee's physical work location determines the applicable employment law, the payroll registrations, the workers compensation coverage, and frequently the company's tax nexus. Most policies do the first job and skip the second. This checklist covers both: eligibility and approval, the approved work locations list and the reporting obligation that makes it enforceable, hours and timekeeping for non-exempt remote employees, expenses and equipment, home workspace safety and workers compensation, information security and monitoring, international work restrictions, and the acknowledgment and maintenance that keep the policy current.
Responding to an EEOC Charge: A Practical Guide for Employers
A charge of discrimination is the beginning of a process that is more consequential than most employers appreciate, because the position statement written in the first month becomes the employer's story for the rest of the case. This guide covers the response from receipt through resolution. It explains the jurisdictional and timeliness questions that should be evaluated before anything is written, the immediate steps including the litigation hold and the anti-retaliation instruction that prevents the second claim, and the investigation that must precede the position statement. It then addresses the position statement itself in detail, including what to include, what to withhold, and the disclosure rules that mean the charging party will read it. Later sections cover requests for information, on-site visits and witness interviews, mediation and conciliation, the determinations the agency can issue, and what to do when the right to sue letter arrives.