Walmart assistant store managers in California have filed a class action lawsuit seeking earned but unpaid overtime pay. The basis for the suit is that the assistant store managers are not exempt from overtime pay requirements, because they spend the vast, vast majority of their time at work doing the same jobs, duties and tasks that the hourly employees they supervise do. Walmart claims the assistant store managers are exempt from overtime pay, because they are paid a salary and have managerial authority.
Source: RH Reality Check
This case represents a very common overtime law violation, one usually referred to as a misclassification case, meaning the assistant store managers were misclassified as exempt from overtime.
Three criteria have to be met for an employee to be properly exempt from overtime as a manager: (1) they have to be paid on a salary basis, which has a particular legal meaning in this context; (2) the salary has to be at least $455 per week (which comes to $11.38 per hour based on a 40 hour week and should be much, much higher); and, (3) they have to meet the actual job duties criteria for a manager/supervisor. If the employee does not really exercise management authority and discretion and spends more than 80% of his or her work time doing the same work duties that his or her subordinates do, the exemption does not apply. This is what the Walmart assistant store managers are claiming.
The claims by the Walmart assistant store managers are similar to that made in an overtime case we filed recently for an Account Manager who was misclassified as exempt from overtime: see Account Manager Suit for Overtime.
Lexington, Kentucky overtime lawyer Robert Abell helps employees and individuals recover the overtime they've earned but not been paid; contact him at 859-254-7076.
