PPP does not stand for ‘Personal Palace Purchase’ – Employee Alleges Whistleblower Retaliation

Now in its 11th week and including 185 cases, Barnes & Thornburg LLP’s Wage and Hour Practice Group continues to catalog COVID-19 related workplace complaints filed in courts around the country. The tracker’s interactive functionality allows readers to digest the summaries in a number of useful ways, and includes a breakdown of the number cases filed in each state and the chronological timeline of when each of these cases was filed organized by topic. As discussed in previous blogs, we continue to see an uptick in workplace class and collective actions directly related to COVID-19, filings where plaintiffs’ counsel have attempted to tie a class or collective-wide wage and hour violation to the pandemic, and cases that sit at the intersection of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and wage and hour laws. This week’s spotlight further highlights this trend with a case involving alleged workplace retaliation for an employee’s objection to purported misuse of PPP funds.