New York City
Employment Attorneys Help Retail Store
Managers and Assistant Managers Receive the
Overtime Pay They Deserve
Dedicated to
eliminating wage theft
Managers
and assistant managers of retail stores are
accustomed to working long hours. Many
retailers know this and compensate managers
accordingly. They understand the importance
of training and promoting lower-level
employees into management positions in order
to better preserve an effective company
culture and environment, which can be
difficult to maintain by hiring managers
from other companies. However, other less
scrupulous companies have learned to exploit
overtime laws by promoting clerks or floor
associates to management positions, with few
actual managerial duties, strictly as an
opportunity to save money on labor.
If you are
a retail manager or assistant store manager
who has become frustrated by the fact that
you are working well over forty-hours a
week, yet receiving no overtime pay, you may
have legal recourse against your employer.
The knowledgeable
New York employment attorneys at
Hepworth, Gershbaum & Roth PLLC provide the
aggressive legal advocacy you need when
facing a wage theft matter.
How do
companies take advantage of employees by
“promoting” them?
The
federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)
provides that employees are entitled to an
hourly wage one-and-a-half times their
regular hourly rate for all time worked over
forty hours in the same work week. There
are, however, certain types of jobs which
are exempt from this overtime requirement.
Retail managers and assistant managers do
not qualify for overtime if they are paid on
a salary basis at least $455 per week, and
their primary duties are, in fact,
managerial, administrative, or supervisory
in nature.
It is easy
to see how this benefits employers. $455 per
week works out to $11.38 per hour—$2.63
above the current New York minimum wage of
$8.75 per hour. However, in a 52-hour
workweek—that’s over six eight-hour days—a
manager is essentially back to making
minimum wage, while minimum wage workers,
working the same hours—and often performing
similar job duties—are grossing $507.50.
Employers
are entitled to invoke this exception when a
manager’s duties include the following:
·
A primary duty of managing the
enterprise of a recognized department or
subsection
·
Directing the work of at least two or
more employees
·
The “authority to hire and fire other
employees or whose
suggestions and recommendations as to the
hiring, firing, advancement, promotion or
any other change of status of other
employees are given particular weight.”
Many
workers, particularly those in assistant
manager positions, are questioning whether
their job duties really are any different
than those of the clerks that they
supervise.
What happens
to companies that wrongfully try to use the
executive exemption to avoid overtime pay?
In a 2006
trial, a jury awarded nearly $36 million in
damages to a group of store managers with
the Family Dollar chain that successfully
argued they had been wrongfully denied
overtime after being required to work sixty
to ninety hours a week while receiving no
overtime. During litigation, evidence
surfaced showing Family Dollar store
managers:
·
Lacked the authority to hire, fire,
promote, discipline, award raises or even
change the schedules of hourly employees.
·
Spent 80 to 90% of their time
performing manual labor tasks, including
running the cash register and cleaning the
bathrooms
·
Lacked discretion over merchandise,
promotions, pricing, all of which were set
at corporate and district levels
·
Assigned management tasks were
strictly prescribed by a store manual, which
also included procedures for properly
emptying the trash and mopping the floor.
The same manual also proscribed the proper
organization of cabinets, and mandated that
only a District Manger could approve use of
a coffee pot in the employee break area.
·
Incredibly, 90% [of store managers]
lacked the power to close the store in an
emergency without the district manager’s
permission.
Based on
all of this, and more, Family Dollar was
forced to pay nearly $36 million in damages
to its store managers in 2008.
If you
believe your employer is wrongfully denying
you overtime as a retail manager or
assistant manager, we want to hear from you
At the Manhattan law offices
of
Hepworth, Gershbaum & Roth, PLLC,
our knowledgeable New York employment law
attorneys have been closely following
similar class action lawsuits against other
retailers such as Kohl’s, Rite Aid, Dick’s
Sporting Goods, and Marshall’s. If you
believe your employer has denied you
rightful overtime wages by making you a
manager in title only, contact one of our
experienced New York employment law
attorneys today for a free, confidential
initial consultation at
212-545-1199, or
contact us online.
Our office is in Manhattan, and we have over
seventy years of combined experience
aggressively pursuing unpaid wages and
damages from employers large and small.
|
CONTACT US
|
Contact an employment law
attorney in New York today
for a free initial
consultation and determine
whether you have a case. For
a free initial consultation,
you can contact us online or
by phone.
|
CALL US
TODAY!
212-545-1199 |
|
|
|
|