Employee Misclassification Lawsuit Says Assurant Failed to Pay Overtime and Commissions

An employee lawsuit against Assurant Inc. claims the insurance company failed to pay overtime and commissions.

Plaintiff Dale H. has filed a class action employee misclassification lawsuit against Assurant Inc. (formerly The Warranty Group), an insurance company.

Dale claims that the company misclassified his role as “exempt” from overtime, but his work should have been classified as a role that was not exempt from overtime pay. He alleges the company then failed to pay him commissions that he had earned in the company’s incentive program. He aims to hold the company liable for denying him wages that he claims he is owed.

Dale claims that he worked at Assurant from February 2017 to March 2018. He says that he was and is a resident in San Diego County, Calif., where he performed work for the company.

Allegedly, Dale’s position was listed as Vice President, Business Development. He claims that this title was a misrepresentation of his duties, claiming that “his role was not actually executive in nature and was far more generic than the title suggests.” He goes on to claim that the title does not reflect the job description Dale responded to when taking the job.

He goes on to say that the title for the job description that he responded to was F&I Account Specialist and that his duties are more in line with this title. He states that his actual role was to “travel over his assigned territory and develop business relationships with auto dealers,” and that many employees performed the same duties in multiple territories.

According to the Assurant employee misclassification lawsuit, during the first six months of his employment with the insurance company, Dale was required to undergo training for his eventual duties. The misclassification lawsuit states that during this training, Dale was sent to various dealerships across California and other states for multiple days to work with the dealerships.

Dale says that this work required him to work more than eight hours a day and 40 hours per week. He claims that during this work, he would assist the finance and issuance departments of the deanships to complete paperwork after sales had been made.

The Assurant employee misclassification lawsuit argues that “during this training, [Dale] was not performing any recognized exempt task and was improperly classified as an exempt employee.” The Assurance lawsuit goes on to state that Dale “was not paid overtime during this training period despite working extremely long hours in excess of eight hours in a day and 40 hours in a week.”

Dale states that he finished his trainmen in June 2017 and began normal duties, and claims that in the course of his normal duties, Assurant denied him the wages he was due in another way.

Allegedly, he was promised both verbally and by the terms of an Incentive Plan offered by the company that he would receive the higher of his 12-month guaranteed Incentive Program commission or his actually commission earnings under the Incentive Program. Allegedly, the Incentive Program tracked metrics and goals, which, if met and/or exceeded, would qualify an employee for points that would lead to a commission.

However, Dale claims that the company failed to pay Dale wages under the Incentive Program, though he claims that the points he earned were sufficient to earn him “commission payments which in fact exceeded the guarantee.” Allegedly, the company breached their Incentive Program contract by denying him payment for earned wages.

The Assurant Employee Misclassification Lawsuit is Case No. 3:18-cv-02851-CAB-AGS, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California.

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