Kroger Must Pay for Overtime, Class Action Says

On Feb 9, a class action lawsuit accused grocery giant The Kroger Co. of failing to pay overtime wages to its “recruiters” at a call center in Blue Ash, Ohio.

The Kroger overtime class action complaint states that recruiters are classified by Kroger as exempt employees under wage and hour laws, and are not paid overtime if they work more than 40 hours per week. However, recruiters primary job is to make telephone screening calls to entry-level employees, ask them three standardized questions, and then set up an interview time for the potential employee at the local store they applied to.

The three questions all recruiters are required to ask are: (1) what interested you in working for Kroger; (2) what job related and/or academic achievement are you most proud of; and (3) how would you show friendly customer service at Kroger. According to the plaintiffs, recruiters were not allowed to add to these questions, and “Applicants rarely provided responses which were not adequate enough to automatically trigger the scheduling of an interview.”

“At no time did [recruiters] have the authority to make hiring or other personnel management decisions beyond scheduling an in-store interview,” and therefore they should not be exempt from overtime pay under either federal or state wage and hour laws, the plaintiffs argue.

Plaintiffs Joseph Hardesty, Derek Chipman, and Madeline Hickey all state that they are former recruiters at the Kroger “CoRE Center” in Blue Ash, Ohio. They claim that they were all routinely expected to work overtime by their supervisors. The plaintiffs assert that they consistently were required to show up to work at least 30 minutes before they started making calls, had to return to work at least 15 minutes before the lunch break was over, and had to stay an extra 30 to 60 minutes late to finish their calls. All together, the plaintiffs estimate that they, and all other recruiters, worked more than 45-50 hours per week, on average.

The Kroger recruiter overtime lawsuit seeks to represent a class of “all current and former employees at Kroger’s CoRE Center who held the position of Recruiter since the start of the CoRE Center’s operations in Blue Ash, Ohio, in 2014,” until the lawsuit ends. The plaintiffs estimate that “approximately 200 or more employees” are recruiters at the Blue Ash facility, and therefore are potential Class Members.

The class action is asking the court to decide the proper wage classification of Kroger recruiters, so that they cannot be denied overtime pay. The plaintiffs also request damages for all unpaid wages for current and former Kroger recruiters at the CoRE Center in Blue Ash, Ohio.

Plaintiffs Joseph Hardesty, Derek Chipman, and Madeline Hickey are represented by Peter A. Saba, Joshua M. Smith, and Sharon J. Sobers of Stagnaro, Saba & Patterson Co., L.P.A.

The Kroger Recruiter Overtime Class Action Lawsuit is Joseph Hardesty, et al., v. The Kroger Co., et al., Case No. 1:16-cv-00298, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, Western Division.