Wage & Hour Class And Collective Action Review – 2025

plaintiffs also supplied an offer letter, which explicitly stated the overtime approval requirements. The defendant argued that the motion should be denied because the plaintiffs had not sufficiently established that the defendant was their employer, asserting that it was their client, SunRun, who enforced the overtime policy. The plaintiffs alleged that they provided adequate declarations establishing their relationship with the defendant as their employer. The court ultimately ruled that the plaintiffs presented the requisite evidence to support their claim that they were similarly-situated to the members of the proposed collective action. Accordingly, the court granted the plaintiffs’ motion for conditional certification of a collective action. In Greene, et al. v. Cascadia Healthcare, LLC , 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 188480 (D. Id. Oct. 15, 2024), the plaintiff filed a collective action alleging that the defendant’s policies – as to automatic lunch deductions, time rounding, and incorrect payroll formulas - resulted in employees not being compensated for overtime work in violation of the FLSA. The plaintiff filed a motion for conditional certification of a collective action, and the court granted in part the motion. In support of her motion, the plaintiff offered her own declaration and the declarations of three other employees, all of whom worked in various positions at different facilities and claimed they were not properly paid overtime wages due to the defendant’s policies. The defendant argued that it was not the plaintiff’s employer, as it was a holding company not directly involved in the day-to-day employment of workers at the healthcare facilities. The court noted that the defendant’s argument went to the merits of the plaintiff’s claims and was therefore not suitable for consideration at the initial stage of conditional certification. The court also considered whether the plaintiff was similarly-situated to members of the proposed collective action. The plaintiff sought conditional certification of a collective action composed of all hourly, non-exempt employees at the healthcare facilities who: (i) had an automatic meal period deduction; (ii) were subject to time-rounding policies; or (iii) received shift differentials, on-call pay, or non-discretionary bonuses from May 18, 2020, to the present. The plaintiff contended that the defendant’s automatic 30-minute meal deduction policy led to off-the-clock work for employees. The court agreed with the plaintiff that her allegations and declarations sufficiently established that she was similarly-situated to the members of the proposed collective action for the automatic meal period policy. Further, the plaintiff contended that the defendant’s time-rounding policy favored the employer by rounding time in its favor. The court rejected the plaintiff’s position. It observed that the plaintiff failed to include this claim in her complaint or collective action definition, and thus denied conditional certification of the time- rounding claim. Finally, the plaintiff asserted that the defendant failed to include shift differentials and bonuses in overtime calculations, thereby resulting in improper overtime pay. The court determined that the plaintiff’s complaint and declarations offered in support made the requisite showing required to establish that she was similarly-situated to the members of the proposed collective action members relative to the shift differential claim. The court, however, determined that it was necessary to limit conditional certification to only patient- facing employees, as the plaintiff’s allegations were based on her experience as a patient-facing registered nurse, and the supporting declarations were from employees with patient-care responsibilities. Accordingly, the court granted in part the plaintiff’s motion for conditional certification of a collective action. The court also granted the plaintiff’s motion for conditional certification of a collective action in Lawrence, et al. v. Sun Energy Services, LLC , 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 186993 (W.D. Penn. Oct. 15, 2024). The plaintiff filed a collective action alleging that the defendant failed to pay employees for out-of-town travel, attending pre-shift safety meetings, and did not include quarterly bonuses in the calculation of their overtime rate in violation of the FLSA. The plaintiff filed a motion for conditional certification of a collective action, and the court granted the motion in part. In support of his motion for conditional certification, the plaintiff offered his own declaration in which he asserted that the members of the proposed collective action were field workers, who are primarily responsible for ensuring that shale gas wells are controlled, and that they were subject to uniform decisions, policies, procedures, and initiatives, including with respect to job requirements and pay provisions. Id. at *4. The defendant did not oppose conditional certification but requested that notice be sent to a narrower scope of collective actions members. The plaintiff did not oppose certifying a narrower collective group. The defendant proposed that the collective action membership be limited to “the particular pay practices claimed to be unlawful in the first amended complaint and distinguished from any other of a range of lawful pay practices not at issue in this case.” Id. at *5. The court undertook an independent analysis of the propriety of certification. It agreed with the defendant as to the scope of the proposed membership of the employees at issue and conditionally certified a collective action consisting of all current and former employees of the defendant who worked as a Greenhat, Leadhand, Roughneck, or Snubbing Operator over the previous three years and were not paid for out of town travel, were not paid for the time spent attending pre-shift safety meetings, or who did not have the amount of any quarterly bonus included in the calculation of their regular rate of pay in determining their overtime rate of

Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online