Employment Law

As of today, Friday, February 21, 2025, Michigan’s Earned Sick Time Act (ESTA) is scheduled to take effect. Guidance on the Act as currently written is available on the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity Wage and Hour Division’s website. However, both the Michigan House of Representatives and the Michigan Senate have proposed amendments […]

To increase the chances of having an attorney take your wrongful discharge case, there are important documents that you should collect before you contact the attorney. All of these documents are important in deciding whether you have a case that can be won in court. And even though very few cases actually end up in

This post is from the materials produced by myself and Michelle P. Crockett, an attorney with the law firm of Miller Canfield, at the Insititute of Continuing Education’s 35th Annual Labor & Employment Law Institute presented on Friday, April 30,2010. Michelle practices employment law from the management side. I. Introduction Although the damages available in

In a case decided by the Michigan Supreme Court on February 8, 2013, the court found that the fired employee had raised sufficient evidence to present her case to the jury. The case is Debano – Griffin v Lake County and it shows how employment attorneys representing employees go about proving a key issue in

Historically, the employment-at-will rule was a byproduct of the industrial revolution in England and the United States. Before the industrial revolution, the employer/employee relationship was more like the relationship between a master and servant. In fact, as late as 1823, it was a crime for an employee to terminate a relationship with a master prematurely.

When an employee is terminated, they are occasionally offered a severance agreement. There are multiple reasons for a severance offer. It could be to soften the blow of a lay-off after many years of service. Or it could be to avoid a future lawsuit by having an employee sign a release. But this week the

What Is the Management or Executive Exemption Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”)? Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), most US employees must be paid at least a minimum wage and overtime pay for all hours worked over 40 in a workweek. But there are exemptions that remove employees from the FLSA’s protection.

The Michigan Court of Appeals reversed a lower court opinion that would have raised Michigan’s minimum wage to $13.03 on February 19, 2023.The Court of Appeals determined that the Michigan legislature had the authority to amend the petition initiatives that were passed in 2018 that would have raised the minimum wage and provided paid sick