Allan S. Bloom is a nationally recognized trial lawyer and advisor who represents management in a broad range of employment and labor law matters. As a litigator, Allan has successfully defended a number of the world’s leading companies against claims for unpaid wages, employment discrimination, breach of contract and wrongful discharge, both at the trial and appellate court levels as well as in arbitration. He has secured complete defense verdicts for clients in front of juries, as well as injunctions to protect clients’ confidential information and assets.
As the leader of Proskauer’s Wage and Hour Practice Group, Allan has been a strategic partner to a number of Fortune 500 companies to help them avoid, minimize and manage exposure to wage and hour-related risk. Allan’s views on wage and hour issues have been featured in The New York Times, Reuters, Bloomberg and Fortune, among other leading publications. His class-action defense work for clients has saved hundreds of millions of dollars in potential damages.
Allan is regularly called on to advise boards of directors and senior leadership on highly sensitive matters such as executive transitions, internal investigations and strategic workforce planning. He also has particular expertise in the financial services industry, where he has litigated and arbitrated cases, including at FINRA and its predecessors, for more than 20 years.
A prolific author and speaker, Allan was the Editor of the New York State Bar Association’s Labor and Employment Law Journal from 2012 to 2017. He has served as an author, editor and contributor to a number of leading treatises in the field of employment law, including ADR in Employment Law (ABA/Bloomberg BNA, Senior Editor), Employment Discrimination Law (ABA/Bloomberg BNA, Final Proof Editor), Cutting Edge Advances in Resolving Workplace Disputes (Cornell University/CPR, Editor), The Employment Law Review (Law Business Research, U.S. Chapter Author), and The Complete Compliance and Ethics Manual (SCCE, Chapter Author).
Allan is a member of the NYSBA's House of Delegates, sits on the Executive Committee of the NYSBA's Labor and Employment Law Section, and is a Fellow of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers. He has been recognized as a leading practitioner by Chambers since 2011.
Subscribe to all posts by Allan Bloom
In a win for businesses that rely on restrictive covenants to protect their assets and investments, on January 29, 2024, the Delaware Supreme Court unanimously reversed a Chancery Court decision that invalidated a “forfeiture-for-competition” provision in Cantor Fitzgerald’s limited partnership agreement. As we previously reported on this blog, last January the Chancery Court invalidated the … Continue Reading
On January 17, 2024, New York Governor Kathy Hochul released the proposed Executive Budget for fiscal year 2025. The Budget includes appropriation bills and other legislation required to carry out budgetary recommendations for the coming fiscal year. This includes a number of proposals that would impact New York employers and employees alike, outlined below. Paid … Continue Reading
On January 17, 2024, New York Governor Kathy Hochul released her proposed Executive Budget for fiscal year 2025. The budget includes proposed legislation that would amend the New York Labor Law to confirm that liquidated damages are not available as a remedy for a violation of Labor Law § 191(1)(a)(1), which requires—absent a waiver from … Continue Reading
In a hotly anticipated decision, the Appellate Division, Second Department held on January 17, 2024 that no private right of action exists for a violation of Labor Law § 191(1)(a), which—absent a waiver by the Commissioner of Labor—requires New York employers to pay “manual workers” no less frequently than weekly. The decision, in Grant v. … Continue Reading
The U.S. Department of Labor issued its long-awaited new rule on independent contractor classification on January 9, 2024. It will be published in the Federal Register on January 10, and take effect on March 11, 2024. With only a few substantive clarifications (discussed below), the Final Rule is identical in all material respects to the … Continue Reading
On January 2, 2024, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) completed its review of the U.S. Department of Labor’s final rule on independent contractor classification under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The rule now heads back to DOL for publication in the Federal Register, and it is likely to take effect 60 days … Continue Reading
The New York State Department of Labor has issued the updated minimum wage poster for “Miscellaneous Industry” employees for 2024. The update covers all industries other than hospitality, farmworkers, and building service. The poster outlines the regional minimum hourly rates based on an employee’s work location. NY employers are required to display the poster in … Continue Reading
After months of speculation and intense lobbying, New York Governor Kathy Hochul vetoed a bill that would have imposed a near-total ban on employee non-competition agreements in New York State. Governor Hochul has long expressed her support for legislation banning non-compete agreements for “low and middle-income” employees, but generally balked at the idea of a … Continue Reading
On December 27, 2023, the New York State Department of Labor published a Notice of Adoption in the New York State Register, finalizing increases in the minimum wage and minimum salaries for exemption effective January 1, 2024. The minimum wage for employees in New York City, Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester counties increases to $16 per … Continue Reading
In an opinion issued on December 7, 2023, a federal district court in the Northern District of Illinois held that time spent in COVID screening activities was not compensable under federal or Illinois law. In the underlying collective and class action, Johnson v. Amazon.com Services, LLC, the plaintiffs—warehouse employees whose job duties included moving boxes, … Continue Reading
In what we believe are her first public statements on the New York Legislature’s proposal to ban ostensibly all non-compete agreements in New York, Governor Hochul on Thursday, November 30 reportedly told a group of reporters: “What I’m looking at right now is striking the right balance between protecting low and middle-income workers, giving them … Continue Reading
On November 22, 2023, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed into law a statewide “Freelance Isn’t Free Act” to provide certain protections for freelance workers. The act mirrors protections in New York City’s law of the same name, which took effect in May 2017. Here are the highlights of the Freelance Isn’t Free Act, which … Continue Reading
On September 13, 2023, the New York State Department of Labor published proposed regulations on the state’s salary transparency statute that took effect on September 17, 2023. As we previously reported, the statute applies to covered employers who post a job, promotion, or transfer opportunity that can or will be performed, at least in part, … Continue Reading
The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking with respect to the U.S. Department of Labor’s proposed updated overtime exemptions rule was published in the Federal Register on September 8, 2023. The 60-day public comment period closes on November 7, 2023. Comments can be submitted electronically here, and all submitted comments can be viewed here. Proskauer’s Wage and Hour Group is … Continue Reading
On August 30, 2023, the U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”) released its proposed new rule on the “white collar” overtime exemptions. The new rule, which would be codified in a revised 29 C.F.R. Part 541, will be published shortly as a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in the Federal Register, at which time a public comment … Continue Reading
The potential New York ban on non-compete agreements, approved by the both houses of the state Legislature back in June, has generated a significant volume of press, commentary, and speculation—but it hasn’t yet been signed into law. What’s the current status of the bill, and how would it impact existing non-compete agreements if and when … Continue Reading
In this blog series, we look at a variety of activities and items and discuss whether an employer has an obligation to pay for them (or the time employees spend in them). In our first installment of this series, we looked at the compensability of time spent by employees in COVID-19 vaccination, testing, and screening … Continue Reading
On July 3, 2023, Hawaii Governor Josh Green signed S.B. 1057 into law, expanding equal pay protections and making Hawaii the latest state to require certain employers to disclose salary information in their job advertisements. The law takes effect on January 1, 2024. The law states that “job listings shall disclose an hourly rate or … Continue Reading
On May 9, the U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”) secured its largest Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) jury verdict in history, when a jury in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania awarded $22 million to a class of approximately 7,500 workers for unpaid time spent on pre- and post-shift activities. The case is Su v. East … Continue Reading
The New York State Senate has passed a bill that, if enacted, would require certain corporate entities to report data regarding the gender, race, and ethnicity of their employees. On March 27, 2023, an identical version of the bill was introduced in the New York State Assembly. If enacted, the reporting requirements would take effect … Continue Reading
In the wake of the recent news of bank failures, businesses—and their investors—are rightly concerned about the implications of a missed or delayed payroll. Let’s look at those implications, and strategies for minimizing risk. Obligation to Make Payroll Under federal and most state laws, employers have both timing-of-pay and frequency-of-pay obligations. Under most of these … Continue Reading
A trio of New York State Senators has proposed a bill that would create a cause of action for “wrongful discharge.” If enacted, the “Safeguarding Employees and Accountability for Termination (SEAT) Act” would be codified in a new Article 20-D of the Labor Law and take effect 90 days after being signed into law. The … Continue Reading
It’s always exciting when the Supreme Court takes up a wage and hour issue—at least for us. Earlier this week, in Helix Energy Solutions Group, Inc. v. Hewitt, the court tackled the question of whether a daily rate can satisfy the “salary basis” test for exemption under the Fair Labor Standards Act as an executive, … Continue Reading
In this episode of The Proskauer Brief, partners Evandro Gigante, Allan Bloom and special employment law counsel Laura Fant discuss the New York City Council’s recently proposed amendments to the city’s pay transparency law. Presently, an employer is only required to include the “base annual or hourly wage or rate of pay” and not other forms of compensation or … Continue Reading