Labor and Employment: Retail Industry

Retailers face industry-specific pressures and legal risks. Trending issues include predictive scheduling, pay transparency, wage compression, DEI and affinity groups, union organizing and awareness, privacy and collection of biometric data, and restrictive covenants.

Retailers continue to face claims alleging legal violations relating to exempt/nonexempt classification, regular rate calculation, meal and rest breaks, time-clock violations, and other wage and hour matters, especially at the state level. These issues often present multijurisdictional challenges, including differing state and local requirements, and we routinely advise and defend large retail clients in 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.
Represent many large 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 opportunity issues.
Conducted DEI compliance audits for national retailers, balancing legal compliance with maintaining the business culture.
Assisted a global furniture manufacturer and retailer in negotiating successor collective bargaining agreements with the International Association of Machinists and the Teamsters Union at its 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 actions, mass arbitrations, Affordable Care Act liability claims and other types of claims.
Developed and implemented nationwide programs for retailers with a third-party network of independent contractor installers, including drafting comprehensive independent contractor vendor agreements with customized protections intended to minimize misclassification risks.
Manage global immigration portfolios for multinational retailers, 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.