Wage & Hour

Hodgson Russ’s wage and hour attorneys have extensive experience representing and advising employers in a wide range of industries. We frequently assist employers in the banking, construction, health and home care, manufacturing, trucking, and hospitality industries with overtime, minimum wage, wage deduction, misclassification, off-the-clock, and independent contractor-related wage and hour issues. Our attorneys have thorough understandings of the unique rules and compliance issues in each of these industries. We are adept at identifying wage and hour issues before they become claims and in assisting businesses in developing compensation arrangements that satisfy business objectives and minimize risk, bringing a practical approach to these matters and delivering cost-effective solutions that make business sense.

Wage and Hour Compliance

Our wage and hour attorneys assist clients in developing effective and defensible compensation arrangements. We regularly conduct internal audits to identify risks and offer sound and practical advice to mitigate those risks. We assist clients in developing effective compensation plans for salespersons and crafting effective and compliant employment policies and practices. We have experience with virtually every type of wage scenario and assist our clients in identifying issues before they become problems. We are skilled in creating opinion letters that can be important in developing defenses to our clients in connection with certain claims. Our multidisciplinary approach to these situations allows us to develop solutions to wage and hour issues that are practical from an employee benefit, tax, and corporate perspective and that also make good business sense.

Litigation

In the event litigation arises, our attorneys have successfully represented clients in both individual and class and collective-action claims. We understand the intricacies and issues that arise at every level in these cases from initial certification through defense on the merits. Our attorneys are skilled in developing cost-effective litigation strategies to resolve cases early when beneficial to our client and in aggressively defending claims when it is not.

Administrative Audits

Hodgson Russ’s wage and hour attorneys regularly represent clients in connection with federal and state administrative audits. We have successfully handled administrative claims involving individual workers as well as audits involving many thousands of workers. We have strong working relationships with many federal and state labor auditors and investigators and extensive familiarity with the administrative process to best position our clients to obtain favorable outcomes.