Wage Theft Litigation

The Firm and its attorneys have extensive experience litigating unpaid wage cases under both the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and its state law counterpart, the Florida Minimum Wage Act. The Firm only pursues such cases where our attorneys conclude that the Defendant has knowingly and willfully failed to pay wages due. As a general rule, the Firm is not interested in FLSA cases where the violation stems from legitimate confusion over the employee’s classification as entitled to overtime or exempt from overtime pay. Rather, the Firm is most interested in cases of clear, intentional violations, particularly those involving workers who are paid low to modest wages. The following are examples of some of the FLSA cases that the Firm has resolved either through litigation, arbitration or pre-suit negotiations:

• Multiple cases involving mortgage loan officers who were paid based on a 40-hour a week schedule but required to work extensive overtime, sometimes amounting to 60-hour work weeks, or, 20 overtime hours without pay.
• Multiple cases of employees required to be “on-call” during non-work hours. In many instances, these employees were required to respond to monitor their email, text messages, and phone calls during time off, and, if requested by the employer, immediately be available to report for a work shift on short notice.
• A manufacturing company that had a written corporate policy holding that overtime was not required and would not be paid for, but that employees could work extra hours at their discretion as a volunteer service or to show their loyalty to the company.
• A retail chain classifying low-wage workers as “assistant managers” in what was clearly a bad faith attempt to make them exempt from overtime laws and avoid overtime pay.
• Multiple companies that had a pattern and practice of always rounding employee time worked down to the nearest 15 minutes. For example: An employee clocks in 10 minutes early and clocks out 10 minutes late every day of the work week. That is 20 minutes of overtime each day. But the company rounds up in the morning, rounds down in the evening, and reports the week as 8 hours a day, or, 40 hours, thereby eliminating the overtime pay.
• A company requiring an employee to travel from the main office to a satellite office every day to complete a project. The company only considers the time actually worked at the main office and satellite office as time worked. The company refuses to pay wages for the travel time.
• Multiple cases involving mandatory company training during work hours, but refuses to pay wages for that time.

If you are facing a similar situation and have questions about your rights, do not hesitate to contact Pollard PLLC at 954-332-2380.