Article courtesy of SBAM Approved Partner ASE
If you get a letter offering to help with your FLSA classification, run as fast as you can to your lawyer: A handful of lawyers have been targeting businesses across the country with threatened collective action claims that the businesses misclassified various categories of workers.
These lawyers often make the offer to help the businesses with their efforts to comply on a go-forward basis with the FLSA’s new exemption rules, while at the same time entering into a settlement to secure closure of classification claims. However, a valid and enforceable release of FLSA claims cannot typically be secured unless it is approved by a court or supervised by the DOL. A class-wide settlement provides—from what these lawyers describe to their targets—a possible path to a court approved resolution of potentially risky FLSA claims. If your organization gets one of these letters, go immediately to your legal counsel.