Chicago Business Litigation Lawyer Blog
Whether intentional or not, many companies implement policies and procedures that create violations of both federal and state wage laws. In our years of practicing law, Lubin Austermuehle has seen many such policies, and our Crystal Lake overtime attorneys have helped many previous clients victimized by them. Our lawyers recently discovered a wage and hour class-action case regarding one such policy and wanted to share it with our readers.
In Marshall v. Amsted Industries, Inc., the two named Plaintiffs worked at Defendants’ steel foundry as an hourly leadman and hourly chipper, respectively. Plaintiffs filed a class-action suit for unpaid overtime and a failure to keep accurate payroll records pursuant to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). They sought conditional certification of a class comprised of all current and former hourly employees who worked at Defendants’ facility in the last three years. Plaintiffs alleged that Defendants implemented a company policy that all hourly workers had to perform maintenance and service tasks as well as don protective clothing prior to the beginning of their work shifts. Additionally, Plaintiffs had to carry out shut-down and clean-up procedures after the end of their shifts, but were never compensated for the work performed during these times. In response to Plaintiff’s motion for conditional certification, Defendants’ moved to de-certify the action.
The Court found that they met the requirements of certification under FLSA and conditionally certified a class, despite the presence of four different collective bargaining agreements and varied job titles of the potential plaintiffs. The Court based their conditional approval on the fact that all of the hourly workers were similarly situated enough to allow Plaintiffs to send out opt-in notices. In so holding, the Court decided that Defendans’ company policies of requiring workers to complete pre- and post-shift tasks applied equally to all of the hourly workers and deprived them of their overtime pay.
Lubin Austermuehle has a team of wage claim attorneys who focus on nationwide class action lawsuits and who have been handling overtime cases for years. Our Chicago overtime lawyers are intimately familiar with the issues that arise during wage claim litigation, and we know the laws that govern overtime cases well. When employees do not receive their earned overtime wages, filing a lawsuit can help to recover those unpaid amounts. Lubin Austermuehle is based in Chicago, and represents 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 Bolingbrook wage and hour attorneys by phone at 1 630-333-0333, or through our online form.