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Retailers face industry-specific pressures and legal risks. Trending issues include predictive scheduling, pay transparency, wage compression, DEI efforts and reverse discrimination claims, diversity training, privacy and collection of biometric data, whistleblowing and executive noncompete agreements.

Retailers continue to face claims alleging legal violations relating to exempt/non-exempt classification, regular rate calculation, meal and rest breaks, time-clock violations and other wage and hour matters, especially at the state level.  These are multijurisdictional issues often involving state and local law, and we routinely advise and defend large retail clients on these matters.

Our retail clients are also seeing an uptick in organizing activity, including on a store-by-store basis, and we work with them on these concerns. With team members positioned across the country, we have the experience and resources to handle the full range of labor and employment issues faced by retailers of all sizes, across all jurisdictions, from discrete counseling questions to class actions.

  • Defending retailers against high stakes multi-plaintiff litigation alleging wage-and-hour violations, California PAGA claims, discrimination and harassment.
  • Obtained orders for many clients compelling individual arbitration on putative class action and representative PAGA action claims alleging violations of California wage-and-hour law.
  • Representing large luxury retail clients as designated employment law counsel in all matters arising from the employer-employee relationship, providing almost daily advice on the full spectrum of employment law issues, including the drafting of policies and agreements for a variety of legal scenarios and providing training to managerial employees on performance management and equal employment issues.
  • Assisted a global furniture manufacturer and retailer in negotiating successor collective bargaining agreements with the International Association of Machinists and the Teamsters union at their distribution facilities across the country. The labor negotiations were challenging due to staffing shortages, instability in the relevant labor markets and quickly rising wage rates in the geographic markets where the client operates. We were able to develop a bargaining plan that anticipated the economic arguments raised by the unions in each set of negotiations, and we implemented a labor strategy that avoided any labor disputes and adjusted wages as desired by the client to place each facility in a competitive position for attracting and retaining workers.
  • Drafted nationwide staffing service agreements and managed service provider agreements, including features designed to reduce exposure to potential joint employer claims, class action exposure, mass arbitrations, Affordable Care Act liability and other types of claims.
  • Managing a large multinational retailer’s global immigration portfolio, including the temporary and indefinite term transfer of store managers and executives to the United States and counseling on I-9, E-Verify and immigration-related corporate compliance considerations pertaining to the hiring and employment of foreign national employees.

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