Some retailers are facing class action suits alleging managers are entitled to overtime pay because of the amount of time they spend performing non-managerial tasks.
Target Corp., for instance, was hit with a suit on Feb. 10 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota on behalf of current and former executive team leaders seeking overtime pay for hours worked in excess of 40 per week.
Plaintiffs from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California and Minnesota brought the suit against Target, alleging they are entitled to overtime pay for working more than 40 hours weekly. Target schedules them to work for 47.5 hours or more each week, but they spend more than half their time performing non-management work, the suit alleges.
Plaintiffs and class members in the Target suit are represented by Rachhana T. Srey of Nichols Kaster in Minneapolis, along with lawyers from Hayber, McKenna & Dinsmore in Hartford, Connecticut; Klafter Lesser in Rye Brook, New York; and Hepworth, Gershbaum & Roth in New York City. Target did not respond to requests for comment about the suit.
And on Feb. 4, Dollar General Corp. was named in a class action in Superior Court of New Jersey in Union County, alleging managerial employees classified as exempt are unlawfully required to perform nonexempt and non-managerial tasks, such as unloading trucks, stocking shelves and cleaning stores without overtime compensation.
At Target, executive team leaders’ primary duty is to perform nonexempt labor, including unloading trucks, unpacking merchandise, filling online orders, stocking shelves, customer service and operating cash registers, the suit claims. To save on payroll costs, the suit alleges, Target sends hourly associates home before the end of their shifts and refrains from replacing those associates who fail to show up for work. Target then requires the executive team leader to finish the hourly tasks of those workers who were sent home or not replaced, the suit claims.
“Notwithstanding this knowledge, defendant classified Plaintiffs and all executive team leaders as exempt executives in conscious disregard of their right to be paid overtime pay, which was, at a minimum, a knowing or reckless disregard and without good cause to believe that its classification of ETLs exempt was lawful. As a result of defendant’s willful violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act and the asserted state laws requiring overtime to be paid, plaintiffs and all other similarly situated ETLs have suffered damages in that they have not received proper compensation,” the suit said.
The Target suit brings class actions on behalf of a nationwide class as well as classes for California, Minnesota, New Jersey and Pennsylvania employees. It seeks certification as a collective action under the FLSA and class action under the laws of the four states.
The Dollar General case brings claims on behalf of Cinthia Gonzales, who works in the company’s Bloomfield, New Jersey, store, and Jomar DeJesus, who works at a store in North Arlington, New Jersey. They are paid a flat salary but work approximately 60 hours per week, most of it doing non-managerial tasks, according to their suit.
“Plaintiffs and the putative class members were purposely misclassified as bona fide executive, administrative professional and/or outside sales employees by defendants to conceal defendants’ deliberate scheme to reduce its labor costs,” the Dollar General suit claims.
The suit brings claims under the New Jersey Wage and Hour Law and the New Jersey Wage Payment Law and seeks certification on behalf of a New Jersey class. The statute of limitations on those laws was changed from two to six years in 2019, said Edward Herban of Mark Lavigne in Springfield, New Jersey.
Herban said he expects the court will consider what proportion of his clients’ workday is spent on administrative functions before determining if they are entitled to overtime pay. The Dollar General suit is focused only on New Jersey and it’s unclear how extensive the complained-of allegations are. For Gonzales and DeJesus, each has “tens of thousands of dollars at stake,” Herban said.
“Even though you do the managerial stuff, that is only like 20 minutes a day, or an hour a day. The rest of your day is unloading trucks, cleaning bathrooms, stocking shelves, something that a clerk would ordinarily do. You’re not really a manager, right? The employer typically does that in order to save on wages,” Herban said.
Dollar General did not respond to requests for comment about the litigation.
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