Seyfarth Synopsis: In our continuing coverage of the top trends found in Seyfarth’s 2022 Workplace Class Action Litigation Report, wage & hour litigation remained the sweet spot for the plaintiffs’ class action bar over the past year. Based on sheer volume and statistical numbers, workers certified more class and collective actions in the wage & hour space in 2021 as compared to any other area of workplace. Complex workplace litigation remains one of the chief exposures driving corporate legal budgetary expenditures. Class actions and multi-plaintiff lawsuits, in particular, continue to provide a source of concern for companies. A prime component in that array of risks indisputably continues to include complex wage & hour litigation.
The following map sets forth a circuit-by-circuit analysis of this year’s 332 class certification decisions in all varieties of workplace class action litigation, including wage & hour, employment discrimination, and ERISA.
As the map reflects, in 2021, complex wage & hour litigation under the FLSA drove more certification briefings and a greater number of certification decisions than other areas combined.
Wage & Hour Certification Trends
The ease with which plaintiffs have achieved first-stage certification in the FLSA wage & hour context surely has contributed to the number of filings in that area, and plaintiffs achieved a higher rate of success on initial certification motions in 2021 than in any other year of...
International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) will pay more than $17 million to settle allegations it violated federal anti-discrimination rules tied to government contracts, the U.S. Department of ...