Public Policy

Keeping exempt jobs exempt: How to avoid wage and hour litigation

Cristina Banks, PhD
2004

Employers are stumped. How can they run efficient businesses and generate profits that investors and the street expect and not run afoul of wage and hour litigation? What is sometimes good practice in management can lead to claims of misclassification of nonexempt workers as exempt. Plaintiff awards in wage and hour litigation can be as much as ninety million dollars, as it was in Bell v. Farmer's Insurance Exchange. The challenge is to understand how well-conceived management practices, when taken to an extreme, may create an environment in which exempt employees turn themselves into non-...

How to conduct a wage and hour audit

Cristina Banks, PhD
Lloyd W. Aubry, Jr.
2005

Companies continue to face costly lawsuits from employees challenging their failure to receive overtime pay based on the so-called "white-collar" exemptions to overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act ("FLSA") and under parallel legislation at the state level, in particular the Wage Orders in California where the requirements exceed those under the FLSA. Elaine Chao, the U.S. Secretary of Labor responsible for issuing regulations and guidelines to ensure compliance with the FLSA, reports that in 2004 the Wage and Hour Division collected over $196 million in back wages, including...

2023 Work, Stress and Health Conference: Interdisciplinary Scoping Review of Literature Relating to Worker Health, Safety, and Well-Being

Cristina Banks, PhD
Alicia LaFrance, MPH, MSW
Ima Varghese Mac, BA
Patricia Iley, BA
Ed Yelin, PhD
2023
The Outreach Core of the California Labor Laboratory (CALL) undertook a scoping review of health, safety, and well-being-related literatures. This scoping review was conducted with the intent of establishing a more extensive Total Worker Health® (TWH) knowledge base from which researchers and practitioners could extend their efforts toward greater integration of TWH principles through a more robust platform of collaboration with their interdisciplinary partners. Hypothesis: Awareness and greater appreciation of the roles other disciplines can play in the development of integrated and holistic...

2024 COEH Building Bridges Conference: Traditional and Alternative Employment in Contemporary Work

Cristina Banks, PhD
Ed Yelin, PhD
2023
Topic: Traditional and Alternative Employment in Contemporary Work:
Who Takes Responsibility for Workers’ Well-being?

This presentation by Cristina Banks and Edward Yelin from the California Labor Lab examines the evolving landscape of employment and its implications for worker well-being. The authors focus on the shift from traditional to alternative employment arrangements and the resulting diffusion of responsibility for workers' welfare.

Key points:

An overview of NIOSH's Total Worker Health® (TWH) approach, which integrates health protection and promotion to advance...

2021 SFDPH: Healthy Work and Workplaces

Cristina Banks, PhD
2021
SFDPH Advance Practice Group Spring Conference Topic: Healthy Work and Workplaces Contents: Working Environment Act Journey to healthy work assessment The Berkeley Workplace Health Assessment Employee health, well-being, and productivity during COVID Employee health, well-being, and productivity post-COVID What can help now? How a Virus Triage Tent Became a Serene Oasis for Health Care Workers

2019 HWES: Health in All Policies

Linda Rudolph, MD, MPH
Julia Caplan, MPP, MPH
2019
Healthy Work Environments Summit

The Interdisciplinary Center for Healthy Workplaces (ICHW) partnered with University Health Services for the planning and execution of the Healthy Work Environment Summit held at UC Berkeley in June 2019. A total of 120 attendees were welcomed to the event.

Goals of the day included:

Develop a shared understanding of how communities can redesign work environments to foster greater health and wellbeing.

Identify health in all policies (HiAP) and built environment efforts that would have the greatest impact at campus and...