Russell Stover Employees File Unpaid Overtime Class Action Lawsuit

Employees working for Russell Stover Candies Inc. have filed a class action lawsuit in federal court against the candy-making company claiming they were purposely mislabeled as sales representatives and were never paid overtime.

Russell Stover is a Missouri-based company with about 5,000 employees, including approximately 170 sales representatives, according to the unpaid overtime class action lawsuit. The majority of its products are delivered and sold to retailers like Wal-Mart and grocery stores.

Nine workers filed the wage-and-hour class action lawsuit against Russell Stover claiming the company “misnamed them as ‘sales representative,'” which made them exempt from overtime when none of them worked primarily sales, as required by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. They argue that most of the sales are not performed or originated from them.

The unpaid overtime lawsuit was filed on May 7 in the U.S. District Court in Atlanta for the Northern District of Georgia.

Cheryl Carter is one of the plaintiffs who was a former sales representative for Russell Stover and worked for the company from May 2005 to December 2012. She claims that the majority of her duties were “primarily” manual labor and that she “regularly” worked overtime but was never compensated for it.

The class action lawsuit argues that the sales representatives duties included receiving shipments, inspecting, unpacking, stocking, cleaning, processing credits and repairing display fixtures the majority of the time.

In June 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that drug companies were not obligated to pay sales representatives when they worked overtime even though some of the employees argued that they were not selling the pharmaceuticals as much as they were promoting them to doctors.

According to Steven Kaminshine, who is the dean of Georgia State University College of Law and is also an expert in labor and employment law, wage-and-hour lawsuits that violate the Fair Labor Standards Act are “very fact dependent.”

“A common area of dispute under the Fair Labor Standards Act turns on employee status — whether it be the particular status at issue in this case, or the question of whether the individual is appropriately classified as an employee or an independent contractor, salaried employee or hourly employee,” he said. “Many of the different classifications under the FSLA are determinative of receiving the protections of the statute.”

The Russell Stover class action lawsuit involves four employees who no longer work for the company and five who do. They are from Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Florida and Mississippi.

The lawsuit claims that Russell Stover made “a fictitious calculation” that the employees only worked 40 hours a week, when they regularly worked a lot more.

Plaintiffs argue that the candy company violated the Fair Labor Standards Act for “many years and continues today.”

If you did not receive all the money you earned, legal options are available to you. Learn more and get a free consultation regarding a claims eligibility at the Wage & Hour Unpaid Overtime Class Action Lawsuit Investigation. Experienced legal professionals are able to determine if you have a case. You could receive back pay as well as penalties, so act now.