The Department of Justice (DOJ), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) have each released press releases highlighting whistleblower rewards and False Claim Act settlements in August 2024. Read for updates from each agency.

A new report released by Harvard and the University of California San Francisco, titled “Compliance and the Complaint Gap: Labor Standards Violations in the California Service Sector” examined the extent of compliance with labor standards among hourly service sector workers in California. Service industry workers are one of the industries known to have large rates of labor and wage pay violations.

Nearly half of workers surveyed at least one violation of the Fair Labor Standard Act (FLSA), with 2 out of 5 reporting violations where they were required to work off the clock, did not receive overtime pay, did not receive full pay, were paid less than the minimum wage for their work, were not paid all required PTO, or they did not receive all bonuses or tips. 

The FTC announced an investigation into the practice of surveillance pricing, listing concerns about how companies are using personal data to set individualized prices for consumers. The FTC sent 6(b) orders to eight companies to gather information about their data surveillance pricing practices and data collection. 

Surveillance pricing has been making the news as companies move to take old systems, such as paper printed with prices on store shelves, and experiment with new systems such as digital price tags that can be changed multiple times per day.  Online companies are also investigating the ability to charge different customers different prices based on personal information they know about the consumer.