EPL Target: Wage and Hour Claims


All employers are experiencing a tremendous wave of wage and hour litigation, and nonprofits are not immune.


“The types of wage/hour claims nonprofits need to be aware of are misclassifications.”


Wendy Mellk, Jackson Lewis


Small nonprofits may think they are immune to class-action litigation concerning wage and hour claims because they have few employees, but they are not. State laws consider the number of employees over a specific number of years. In New York, for example, the law looks back six years, so a nonprofit with 20 current employees would be considered to have had 120 employees for the purposes of a class action. The greatest vulnerability for nonprofits is the misclassification of employees as exempt or nonexempt. Nonexempt employees are entitled to overtime, even if they are working at home. Another growing exposure is the use of interns who claim that they are doing the work of employees and should be paid according to labor laws.


Copyright © 2012 by A.M. Best Company, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this report may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means; electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise.


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