Fidelity Employees to Benefit from $1.2 Million Labor Law Settlement

A federal judge in California has approved a labor law settlement worth $1.2 million that will benefit current and former employees of Fidelity Brokerage Services.

Final approval was given to this settlement by U.S. District Judge William Alsup. The settlement will involve payments from Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC to a Class of current and former Fidelity Brokerage Services employees in California and a nationwide collective under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

The plaintiff in the labor law lawsuit argued that the company did not appropriately pay overtime wages by failing to take into account the compensation in various company programs and in making miscalculations over the regular rate of pay. The original class action lawsuit was brought forward in October 2017.

In that case, named plaintiff Adrian M. said she served as a financial representative at the Fidelity Investments subsidiary business from 2015 to 2017. She participated in numerous company programs during her tenure there including student loan repayment, fitness reimbursement and quarterly bonuses. She argued in her lawsuit that the company violated labor law standards in California because calculation of her overtime wages did not take into account the compensation she received from these benefit programs.

Fidelity failed to have that suit dismissed in April 2016. The company tried to argue that its parent company FMR was not really Adrian’s employer.

Certification was awarded to the California Class and the nationwide Fair Labor Standards Act collective in last June. Class Members include all present and former non-exempt Fidelity Brokerage Services employees who worked there from October 2013 to the present and who worked in numerous company programs and overtime hours at the same period.

The nationwide collective also includes present and former non-exempt employees from May 2015 to the present who received fitness reimbursements and student loan reimbursements during a pay period in which they also worked overtime.

California Labor Law: Overtime Basics

California has very strict laws on the books as it relates to overtime. California law requires that an employer pay a worker overtime for hours worked beyond eight in a work day or 40 in a work week.

California laws further require that overtime rate be paid at one-and-a-half times the employee’s regular rate of pay for all hours worked in excess of 40 in a workweek and for up to four hours worked in excess of eight in a single workday. Hours worked beyond 12 in a single workday qualify for double the regular pay rate.

When a company fails to pay out the required overtime, the worker or workers who did not receive the right pay can take legal action. Overtime is not owed to every person who works for a company, so the burden falls to the plaintiff to show that the employer made an error with calculations of the time logged or in the classification of the individual worker.

The Fidelity Labor Law Class Action Lawsuit is Case No. 3:17-cv-06027 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

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