Misclassified Employee Lawsuit Filed by Taco Bell Employees

Four plaintiffs are filing a class action misclassified employee lawsuit against Sundance Inc. franchise owners of multiple Taco Bell locations, stating among other things that they were not paid lawfully for time worked.

Plaintiffs Jolene Flanagan, Travis Pietrykowski, Michelle Wilkins and Denise Wood all worked in various positions at different Sundance-owned Taco Bell locations. These positions include shift manager, assistant manager, crew member and general manager.

They believe, according to this misclassified employee lawsuit, that this lawsuit is warranted based on Sundance’s misclassification of employees and improper wage and hour practices scheme.

The plaintiffs allege that Sundance regularly failed to pay employees for all hours worked, misclassified some employees as “exempt” from overtime laws so as to avoid paying them overtime pay, and failed to pay overtime wages for all hours worked over 40 in a given week.

According to their misclassified employee lawsuit, Sundance devised various job titles but still required employees to perform essentially the same jobs. The titles for these virtually interchangeable jobs are crew member, shift manager, assistant manager and general manager.

All “manager” jobs must perform similar duties as crew members which include taking orders, making food, cleaning and other general labor tasks. Even though there are small amounts of time reserved for “managerial” tasks, most responsibilities are that of a crew member, the plaintiffs allege.

In addition, according to this misclassified employee lawsuit, Sundance has a business model which supports not paying employees for actual hours worked.

The plaintiffs report that the company regularly “shifts” hours that an employee worked during one week to the following week so that the time records do not indicate an employee worked more than 40 hours in a given week. Allegedly, Sundance keeps a white board in its office which tracks the “shifted” hours from week to week.

This practice is illegal, plaintiffs claim, and allows Sundance to not pay employees for hours worked in a week as well as not require them to pay for overtime worked.

Also, some employees were allegedly not paid at all for their shifted hours. If shifted hours meant that over 80 hours were logged in one two-week pay period, the company would cap hours at 80. Essentially, employees would not be paid for any hours worked over 80.

A further complaint in the misclassified employee lawsuit is that many times, hourly workers were instructed to clock out before they were finished with work.

The plaintiffs are bringing this overtime lawsuit as a nationwide collective action and are bringing forth claims of violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act and failure to pay overtime wages and failure to pay minimum wage.

This Misclassified Employee Lawsuit is Flanagan, et al. v. Sundance Inc. and is Case No. 2:16-cv-13598-GCS-RSW in the United States District Court of the Eastern District of Michigan, Southern Division.

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