In an effort by airlines to increase revenue, they began charging customers fees for checking their baggage in curbside. These fees have led to a decrease in the tips that “skycaps” used to receive from airline passengers checking in their bags curbside. In DiFiore v. American Airlines Inc., 454 Mass. 486 (2009), a group of “skycaps” who worked for American Airlines and a group who worked for an agency hired by American Airlines to perform curbside check in at Logan Airport filed suit as a violation of the Massachusetts Wage & Hour act, M. G. L. c. 149 § 152, alleging that the instituted fees which were collected by American Airlines and G2 belonged to them.

American Airlines argued that since they were not the “employer” of the “skycaps” hired by G2 they did not owe fees to those “skycaps.” This was because in the Massachusetts Wage & Hour act the term “employer” is used indicating that service fees charged by someone other than the employer did not have to be given to the employees performing the service. This led the Supreme Judicial Court to determine what is meant by a “service charge” in the text of the statute. In August 2009, the SJC determined that while the statute does include the term “employer” that the legislature did not intend to allow employers, such as American Airlines, to contract with an outside agency and gain the power to keep service fees earned by service employees. Rather, the SJC found that the purpose of the statute is to ensure that service employees were given the service fees charged for their services and allowing a company to hire an outside agency to hire service employees would nullify the central purpose of the protection given to service employees in the first place.

Subsequent to the SJC’s ruling both parties filed motions in U.S. District Court which they ruled on December 23, 2009. American Airlines filed a motion for relief from judgment arguing that Massachusetts Tips Law is preempted by the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978. The Court ruled that the motion for relief from judgment must be denied because the Airline Deregulation Act does not preempt Massachusetts Tip Law. The Plaintiff’s filed a motion to amend the judgment arguing that (1) they should receive treble damages under the amended M. G. L. c. 149 § 150 (2) that all of the collected fees were not included in the original judgment. The Court found that since the legislature did not expressly state that the amendment should be applied retroactively treble damages are discretionary and are not to be applied in this case. However, the Plaintiff’s were able to obtain additional feed collected between March 1, 2008 and April 7, 2008.

Though compliance with a state’s applicable wage and hour act is mandatory for employers, some companies try to get around this duty by devising systems where employees are not actually on the clock or are supposed to be on break when actually working. [more on past lawsuits where companies strategized to avoid paying employees proper wages]. A recent Pennsylvania lawsuit against one of that nation’s largest employers proved some tactics to be extremely detrimental to the employer.
In 2006, over 186,000 current and former Wal-Mart employees originally brought a lawsuit for damages resulting from alleged missed rest and meal breaks and mandated “off the clock” work in defendant’s Pennsylvania stores. Pennsylvania’s wage payment and collection law (WPCL) can require employers who fail to pay wages, without a good faith reason to withhold payment, to pay, whichever is greater, liquidated damages of $500 or up to 25 percent of the total amount of wages due. Former employees of Wal-Mart claimed that the company made workers skip more than 33 million rest breaks from 1998 to 2001 to boost productivity and lessen labor costs. Plaintiffs complained that one of Wal-Mart’s secrets for its profitability is its implementation of a system that encourages off-the-clock work for its hourly employees.
Plaintiffs prevailed in the original 2006 class action where Judge Mark I. Bernstein originally awarded the current and former workers over $187 million. A few months ago in October 2007, the judge awarded an additional $62 million in statutory liquidated damages for over 124,000 of the plaintiffs who worked after January 1, 2002. This increased the total award to over $141.1 million in damages that Wal-Mart must pay.

If any a company fails to pay an employee, then the employer, pursuant to the Massachusetts Wage & Hour Act (Chapter 149, §§ 148 and 150), may have to pay treble (triple) damages to the employee, plus litigation costs, interest and reasonable attorney’s fees. (more…)

Hana Al Jader, a Saudi princess, was recently in federal district court in Boston facing charges for domestic servitude and forced labor.
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