Workers Who Make Oral Complaints Protected From Retaliation Under The FLSA
In a significant Supreme Court employment law decision on behalf of workers, the Supreme Court has recently determined that an oral complaint of a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act is protected by the FLSA’s “anti-retaliation” provisions. FLSA violations include, but are not limited to, actions that deny workers’ rights to minimum wage and overtime pay. Under federal law, if an employee “files any complaint” alleging violations of the FLSA the employer may be subject to a retaliation lawsuit if they then take “negative employment actions” against that employee. Negative employment actions include actions such as firing an employee, scheduling worse hours or transferring an employee to an inconvenient work location.
Here, an employee – Kevin Kasten - complained several times to HR personnel about the location of time clocks at a plastic corporation. He claimed that he and other workers were not paid for time spent donning and doffing because the time clocks were located outside the dressing areas. Kasten was then fired. The company argued that since the employee did not make a written complaint – only oral – he was not protected from retaliation.
The Supreme Court sided with Kasten – finding that an oral complaint deserves the same protection as a written one. The Supreme Court stated that limiting “coverage to written complaints would undermine the Act’s basic objective” and the FLSA relies on “information and complaints received from employees seeking to vindicate rights claimed to have been denied.” The Court noted that in 1938 when the Act was enacted many workers had difficulty putting a complaint into writing. Limiting the meaning of filing a complaint to only written ones would harm those workers the FLSA was designed to protect.
For more information, or if you believe you have been retaliated at work as the result of a complaint about an FLSA violation, contact the Atlanta employment lawyers at Buckley & Klein, LLP for a confidential consultation.
