Wage Law

Twitter

More lawyers are joining twitter every day, and it's becoming a popular way to get your legal news quickly. We find ourselves posting short notes on twitter when we don't have time to put together a proper blog post immediately. If you aren't following your favorite legal bloggers on twitter, you're only get part of the information they are offering. You can follow us at http://twitter.com/wagelaw

Our 1,000th Post

This is our 1,000th post. There isn't much to it, other than to mention that it is our 1,000th post.

The Blawg 100

The ABA Journal has published a list called the Blawg 100, a list of the 100 best legal blogs. Sadly, we did not crack the list, nor did many of the other outstanding legal blogs we regularly read. The list is interesting, but it includes a great many blogs that, frankly, we don't think of as "blawgs", e.g., Daily Kos. Many good reads can be found there. We suggest you check them all out, and bookmark the four or five you like best.

Boring?

Not everyone enjoys wage and hour law as much as we do. Here's Workplaceprofblog's take on the recent Wal-Mart settlement in Minnesota:

We don't do much wage and hour stuff on this blog because these cases tend to come down to whether nurses on standard-size ambulances are exempt from overtime pay. But Wal-Mart sure got another lesson on why it should not ignore the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)

Congratulations to the bloggers over at Workplaceprofblog on their 1,000,000th hit. We've still hit just half that. Their subject matter is broader, and hence, of broader interest.

Twittering Wage Law

We've added a Twitter account to our blogging process. We'll try to put a link to each post and each bit of wage law news into a "tweet". Maybe we'll find other uses for Twitter, too. You can follow us at http://twitter.com/wagelaw.

Additions to the Blogroll

We've added Griego's California Employment Law  and The Post Partisan to the blogroll. Both are worth checking out.

Four More Years?

We wrote our first blog post in this forum four years ago today. We weren't really sure what we set out to accomplish, but we figured that, if we got half as many hits as our personal blogs, we'd  get a pretty decent audience. At the same time, we had trouble finding a blog that kept track of what we cared about most - the rapid change and development in California's wage and hour law. Since then, we've followed more than a half dozen big, highly anticipated cases, we've talked to reporters all over the country about wage and hour cases and trends, and we've met more than half of the lawyers who practice in this area in California.

This blog is still authored by Michael J. Walsh and Mark A. Walsh, the principals in Walsh & Walsh, P.C., but we've had a couple of guest posters. We continue to talk about what we set out to talk about, which are matters of interest to California employees and employee's rights attorneys, with a particular emphasis on working conditions and wage and hour matters, including:

• Unpaid Overtime
• Misclassification of Salaried Employees
• Failure to Permit Meal Periods and Rest Periods
• Failure to Pay Final Wages Upon Termination
• Unlawful Docking of Pay for Shortages or Breakage
• Failure to Provide and Maintain Uniforms
• Compelled Patronage / Wardrobing

In hindsight, we didn't talk much about uniforms and wardrobing. The rest has continued to draw our attention. As more wage and hour cases have made it to the Court of Appeal as class actions, we've found ourselves talking more and more about class actions - settlements, strategies, scandals, and of course, CAFA. We think Equal Pay might become a popular topic in 2009 and 2010.

We have spent a lot of time on the project, but on the whole, it has been a good investment. Hopefully, reading it has been a good investment for you.

Our Millionth Eye

This morning, we got our 500,000th hit. We're up above 1,000 hits a day on weekdays, with a considerable drop on the weekends. At the rate we're going, we'll probably get our millionth hit sometime late next year. That's more readers than we ever expected, given our fairly narrow subject matter.

Blawg Reviews

A few days ago, the UCL Practitioner did Blawg Review #183 for Blawg Review. We appreciate getting a mention, but even more so, we enjoyed how detailed and inclusive Kim was in her review of California legal blogs. There were several we had never seen before, and we might be adding a few to the blogroll.

Our New Virtual Real Estate

We can now be found at: http://www.californiawagelaw.com/ as well as the old typepad address.

The Overtime Blog

We've found another wage and hour blog: overtimelaw.blogspot.com (News, education, and general information regarding overtime pay, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Department of Labor, minimum wage, and court cases.) It has been published since July 2008 by Robert J. Wiley, a Texas attorney who is also licensed in California and Washington, D.C.