Large retail stores, such as Target and Walgreens, have faced a number of public lawsuits from their employees. One of the most recent lawsuits alleges Target misclassified some of its employees as exempt from overtime, and as a result, failed to pay those employees the proper overtime compensation when they worked more than forty hours a week. Target denies these claims and asserts it complied with the law.
Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), employers are required to pay all their workers no less than $7.25 per hour. For all time spent working after eight hours a day or forty hours a week, employers are required to pay the proper overtime rate of one and one-half times the employee’s normal hourly wage. The FLSA does list some exceptions to this rule, but it is very specific about the types of employees that can qualify for exempt status.
The FLSA describes three main types of employees that are not entitled to overtime. An employee who is paid a salary of at least $23,600 and works in either an administrative, executive, or professional capacity is not entitled to overtime compensation. However, rather than simply classifying employees as fitting into one of these categories, the FLSA has specific requirements for each category.
In order to qualify for overtime exempt status in the administrative category, an employee must perform primarily office work and provide administrative assistance directly to an executive. For the executive category, an employee must spend the majority of her time managing other employees, must have free reign to discipline those employees, and have direct say in the hiring and firing of those employees. The executive category is probably the most misunderstood (or abused) as employers often tend to label all their managers as overtime exempt, even if they spend the majority of their time performing the same tasks as hourly employees. The final category is the professional category and it covers all those workers who need a particular set of skills or level of education in order to perform their jobs. This category includes doctors, lawyers, artists and performers.
According to the recent class action wage and hour lawsuit against Target, the retail store allegedly misclassified its executive team leader-asset protection employees as exempt from overtime. The lead plaintiff, Bobby R., has filed the lawsuit on behalf of himself and all other similarly situated employees of Target. The lawsuit alleges the employees are paid a fixed salary, regardless of the number of hours the employees worked.
Bobby R. alleges he and other Target employees were regularly required to work more than forty hours a week, without getting paid for the extra time. The overtime lawsuit alleges the employees often had to work well over fifty hours a week, but they performed many of the same duties as hourly non-exempt employees. Among other things, Bobby R. and his fellow Class Members were allegedly required to monitor security cameras and patrol the stores to look out for theft. They were also allegedly required work on the retail sales floor throughout their shift each workday, alongside hourly non-exempt employees.
The lawsuit alleges thousands of employees have been misclassified by Target and have performed countless hours of overtime work without pay.
The Illinois class action attorneys at Nationwide Consumer Rights are investigating unpaid overtime claims against hospitals, senior and assisted living centers and large doctor and dental practices and chains for erasing or altering time sheets or time records, pressuring workers not to report or record overtime, and otherwise failing to pay workers for overtime and other wages. If you are the victim this practice call us at 630-333-0333 or contact us online by filling in the form at the side of this blog.
The Chicago unpaid overtime lawyers at Nationwide Consumer Rights have decades of experience fighting for wage earner’s rights. Our unpaid overtime law firm has a team of Chicago area attorneys who focus on nationwide class action lawsuits and work out of Chicago and Oak Brook offices. We prosecute claims for workers all over the Chicago area including Evanston and Schaumburg. We protect unpaid workers who haven’t received overtime throughout the Chicago area including in DuPage, McHenry Kane and Cook Counties.
Our Rockford, Joliet and Palatine overtime lawyers are intimately familiar with the issues that arise during wage claim litigation, and we know the laws that govern overtime cases well. Many employers misclassify employees as being exempt from overtime laws and pay workers salaries instead of hourly wages in order to avoid paying them overtime. Some employers mistakenly classify employees as exempt and others intentionally do so in order to circumvent the law. In either case, workers do not receive the wages they should, and a lawsuit may be the only way to recover their earned wages.
Nationwide Consumer Rights is based in Chicago and Oakbrook Terrace. We represent clients throughout the country who have not been paid for the overtime hours that they worked. If you believe that you are owed overtime wages, contact one of our Chicago class action attorneys by phone at 630-333-0333 or through our online form.