Alaska Employment Law

Retail assistant managers as executives:  A recent article by a management-side lawyer sees a trend toward judicial solicitude of employer claims of executive exemption under the FLSA and similar state overtime laws.  See Who’s minding the store? from C. R. Wright of Fisher & Phillips.  H/T: Washington Labor, Employment & Employee Benefits Law Blog.

The situation under the AWHA is a little different than under the FLSA (a little better for the employee).  While the AWHA uses the same “primary duty” test as the FLSA, state law also requires the employer to pay the “executive” a salary at least two times the minimum wage for 40 hours, i.e., at least $572/week.  See AS 23.10.055(b).   The base salary for executives under the FLSA is, in comparison, $455/week.  (The state base salary for executives used to be $715/week, but AKDOL recently repealed the regulation that set that salary above the statutory minimum.)

Posner on race under Section 1981:  In Abdullahi v. Prada USA Corp., 2008 WL 746848 (7th Cir. Mar. 21, 2008), Judge Richard Posner discusses the “looseness” of the race requirement of 42 U.S.C. § 1981.   “[T}he loose sense [of the word ‘race’] is the right one to impute to a race statute passed in 1866,” he concludes.   H/T: Workplace Professor.

DAlaska on ineffective assistance of counsel:  Judge John Sedwick has adopted Magistrate Judge John Robert’s recommendation to deny an ineffective assistance motion from a criminal defendant.  The defendant argued that the restoration of his civil rights under state law shielded him from prosecution for firearm possession under 18 U.S.C. § 922.  Sedwick pointed out that the restoration statute in inapplicable to concealable firearms, “making it a lead pipe cinch that [the defendant’s] argument fails.”  U. S. v. Lewis, 2008 WL 749844 (D.Alaska Mar. 17, 2008).