A former American Airlines reservations agent who lost her eyesight in an accident spent nearly four years on unpaid leave before the airline fired her, according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The agency announced on August 28 that American Airlines will pay $200,000 to resolve the case, along with a set of commitments…

Thirty-six restaurant workers in the Baton Rouge area are owed money after federal investigators found their employers had been quietly routing part of their tips to people who were never supposed to see them. Three locations run by the same ownership group — Umami Japanese Bistro in Baton Rouge and two Geisha, Sushi with a…

Investigators went looking for unpaid overtime at a South Carolina restaurant company and found something else stacked on top: managers with their hands in the same tip pool that servers, bartenders and bussers were splitting after their shifts. When the U.S. Department of Labor finished counting, the bill came to $618,666 in back wages for…

A federal lawsuit over a Virginia Apple Store employee’s request for two days off a week to observe his faith has ended in a $150,000 settlement. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced that Apple Inc. agreed to pay the money and update its religious-accommodation policies after the agency accused the company of denying a…

After a six-year-old labor dispute in a small Pennsylvania town, the National Labor Relations Board has just announced one of the larger strike settlements it has issued this year. Langeloth Metallurgical Company will pay $3,662,485 to 51 former strikers after the Board’s Region 6 found the company illegally slow-walked or refused to bring workers back…

American Airlines will pay $200,000 to settle a federal lawsuit accusing the carrier of refusing to help a Fort Worth reservations employee keep working after she lost her sight. According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the airline kept the worker on unpaid, involuntary leave for almost four years after she developed cortical blindness…

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says a national grocery chain will pay $75,000 to settle a lawsuit accusing it of shutting out a cashier who asked for a place to sit. The worker, a breast cancer survivor whose treatment left her with permanent nerve damage in her legs, asked only for a stool during…

A federal salary line that determines whether a company can legally treat an executive, administrative, or professional employee as exempt from overtime pay is back at $684 a week, or $35,568 a year, after the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division restored that figure on May 15, 2026. The move ends an 18-month…

Many laid-off workers assume severance is a legal right. It is not. No federal law requires an employer to pay severance at all, and when it is paid, it comes from a contract, a company policy, or a negotiated agreement rather than a statute. Knowing that changes how a worker should approach a layoff, because…

Getting a 1099 instead of a W-2 does not automatically make someone an independent contractor, and the difference is worth real money. When a company wrongly labels an employee as a contractor, the Labor Department says the worker may be owed back overtime, minimum wage, and other protections they were denied. For a lot of…