Class Action Blog : Consumer Fraud, Consumer Protection, Securities and Antitrust Lawyer & Attorney : Meiselman, Denlea, Packman, Carton & Eberz

On July 1, 2011, a class action lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, on behalf of current and former inside sales employees of SuperMedia, Inc., to recover unpaid overtime wages for a three year period. The Complaint alleges that SuperMedia failed to comply with the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) by failing to include commissions earned by plaintiffs and the putative class members in their regular rate of pay, shortchanging the amount of overtime owed to them under the FLSA. 

The FLSA generally requires that an employee who works more than 40 hours a week be compensated for the hours worked over 40 at a rate of not less than one and one-half times the regular rate of pay. Plaintiffs were paid a salary or an hourly rate and were also paid commissions. SuperMedia failed to include the commissions in the “regular rate of pay” when calculating overtime pay due to its employees. Given the number of employees and the 3 year time period, SuperMedia potentially denied its employees millions of dollars in overtime compensation.

 If you or someone you know believes your employer has failed to properly compensate you for overtime worked or any other type of compensation, please contact us to discuss your legal rights. 

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In these difficult economic times, workers feel lucky just to have a job.  At the same time, many companies are facing intense pressures to cut costs -- and employee salaries are a big component of their costs.  Unfortunately, some employers take unfair advantage of their employees by making them work "off the clock" and then do not pay them for their time spent off the clock.  This can happen in a variety of ways.

Sometimes the employer will make the employee work for a period of time before he is allowed to clock in for the day; or else, the employer may require him to clock out and continue working after that.  Or, the employer may make the worker work through lunch or other breaks.  And, in our high-tech society, some employers make their workers check and respond to e-mails and text messages at all hours of the day or night.  Bottom line -- the employee is doing work and not getting paid for that work.

By making their workers work off the clock, the employers also save considerably on overtime pay -- which kicks in for hourly workers afer 40 hours of work in a week under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), and requires the employer to pay "time and a half".  According to the U.S. Department of Labor, 85% of the work force is protected by the FSLA overtime rules. so employers have a great incentive to keep workers from recording enough hours to hit the orertime milestone.  Other tactics some employers use to cheat their employees of their pay include, "rounding" the starting or ending tmes of employment for a shift to the nearest half hour or 15 minutes.  (Insignificant rounding up to the nearest 15 minutes, however, is generally permitted under federal and state regulations so long as it is implemented in a manner that overtime will compensate employees for all the time they have actually worked --  i.e., sometimes the employer rounds up and sometimes the employer rounds down).

Another strategy of employers is to wrongly classify hourly employees as professional, executive, or administrative.  These categories are exempt from the overtime rules, and by improperly classifying workers, an employer can avoid paying them overtime.  

If you feel that your employer has denied you pay based on one of these strategies or through similar tactics, please contact us to discuss your legal rights.   

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A few months ago we published a blog post about employees who are paid by the hour -- particularly low wage workers -- and who are often cheated by their employers.  We pointed out that hourly workers are routinely denied proper overtime pay and are often paid less than minimum wage according to a newly released study based on a survey of workers in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

But what about workers who are not being paid their tips, even though their employers are charging customers a mandatory gratuity for various services?  Unfortunately, many employees do not realize that they are entitled to receive all, or a significant portion, of gratuities charged by employers to their customers.

Indeed, there are millions of workers in the USA that rely on tips for most of their income, and there are well over two million businesses that rely on tipped employees.  According to recent statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor, food and beverage service-related workers held 6.5 million jobs in 2000 alone.  The U.S. Department of Labor estimates in a 2001 study that tips and gratuities may account for well over $5 billion per year being left on plates and tip trays and financed on credit cards.

But let's face facts.  Relying on customers' tips for your income is tough.  The average customer doesn't realize how difficult and hard the average waiter, waitress, hair dresser, concierge, cab driver, maitre de or bartender works for their money.  Dealing with and satisfying the general public is one of the most demanding jobs around.  Many, if not most, tipped employees have a tough time making ends meet.

So if your employer is withholding gratuities that you’ve earned, you may have a case under The Fair Labor Standards Act ("FLSA").  The Act mandates that gratuities earned by an employee but collected by an employer must be turned over to the hard working employee whom earned it.  If your employer is not doing so, you may have a basis to file a class action suit to recoup the tips earned by you and all other workers at your work site.  Employers who do not manage and properly account for the gratuities earned by their employees and who do not properly pay their employees tips that they have collected on behalf of their workers may in fact be violating the law.

 If you believe that your employer is withholding gratuities that you’ve earned, please contact us to discuss your legal options.

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Employees who are paid by the hour, particularly low wage workers, are often cheated by their employers.  Hourly workers are routinely denied proper overtime pay and are often paid less than minimum wage according to a newly released study based on a survey of workers in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

In surveying 4,387 workers in various industries, including child care, retail and apparel manufacturing, the researchers found that the typical worker had lost $51 the previous week through wage violations, which translates into an average loss of 15% in pay.  According to the New York Times, the study -- the most comprehensive examination of wage-law violations in a decade -- also found that 68% of the workers interviewed had experienced at least one pay-related violation in the previous week.  Moreover, the study found that 26% of the workers surveyed had been paid less than the minimum wage, that 1 in 7 had worked off the clock, and that 76% of those that worked overtime were not paid their proper overtime compensation.

Annette Bernhardt, an author of the study and policy co-director of the National Employment Law Project, stated that, “When unscrupulous employers break the law, they’re robbing families of money to put food on the table, they’re robbing communities of spending power and they’re robbing governments of vital tax revenues.”

This study comes only ten months after a federal judge in Manhattan awarded $4.6 million in back pay and damages to 36 deliverymen at two Saigon Grill restaurants for violating state and federal minimum wage and overtime laws. In those cases, the Chinese immigrants were required to work 11 to 13 hours a day, six days a week, without proper compensation for overtime. Even more egregious, the company would take illegal deductions out of their salaries for various “infractions,” such as allowing the restaurant door to slam or for failing to log a delivery.

If you believe that you’ve been underpaid by your employer, or that your pay was improperly “docked” by your employer based upon alleged infractions of company policy, please contact us to discuss your legal options.

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