Wage and Hour Lawsuit Claims Hotel Managers Manipulated Payroll

A wage and hour lawsuit against Global Hotel Group alleges a housekeeping manager and her staff were not appropriately compensated for overtime hours worked.

According to this wage and hour lawsuit, plaintiff Cynthia B. says she was employed as the housekeeping manager by Global Hotel Group from Feb. 29, 2016 to Aug. 22, 2016. Her primary responsibility from her start date until the hotel opened on April 16, 2016 was to ensure the proper physical preparation of the hotel rooms.

Once the hotel opened for business, Cynthia’s duties included checking the rooms for cleanliness, maintaining inventories and scheduling for 13 to 15 housekeeping staff.

She also was expected to submit Do Not Disturb, Quality Assurance, and Check-Out reports daily to hotel management. Cynthia would physically check the rooms before creating her reports. She carried a walkie-talkie that she used to send and receive instructions among hotel staff.

Her work was considered non-exempt from federal labor law requirements, and Bradley was to be paid on an hourly basis with overtime compensation for hours she worked in excess of 40 per work week.

To keep track of her time worked, the hotel used an electronic time clock that required Cynthia and the housekeeping staff to punch in and punch out.

Wage and Hour Lawsuit Alleges Alterations in Time Clock

According to the wage and hour lawsuit, the hotel “altered the electronic time clock and/or payroll records, reducing the number of hours worked by the staff. The reduction in worked hours per pay period eliminated recorded overtime earned,” which means that Cynthia and other housekeeping staff allegedly were not paid the overtime wage differential required by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) when they worked more than 40 hours per week.

Cynthia and her staff had their lunch time automatically deducted from their paid time even though they allegedly “would often need to work through (lunch) in order to complete their assignments.”

In the wage and hour lawsuit, Cynthia says she “would often receive complaints from the housekeeping staff that they had hours missing and the pay checks were wrong.”

Upon reporting these complaints to her hotel supervisor, Cynthia was told the staff “must be missing clock-ins and/or clock outs” and that the hotel was not responsible if the staff incorrectly clocked in or out.

At the same time, around June 2016, Cynthia “noticed that her pay checks were not calculating correctly to the number of hours that she was working.”

According to the wage and hour lawsuit, Cynthia eventually caught her supervisor reviewing payroll on a computer screen which showed the hours worked on the payroll program did not match her actual hours worked. When confronted, Cynthia’s supervisor responded that the hotel was looking to place Cynthia on a salary rather than an hourly wage.

Despite promising to fix the incorrect reporting issues, Cynthia continued to see she was not being paid the hours she had worked. When Cynthia went to her supervisor’s manager, the regional manager, she still received no satisfaction. The regional manager told Cynthia if her supervisor had taken away hours from the staff, “it would show red on the payroll.”

On Monday, Aug. 22, 2016, Cynthia arrived to work at 5am and handed in her keys with her resignation letter to the night auditor.

The wage and hour lawsuit says Cynthia “calculates that during the six months of her employment, she incurred a total of $8,212.50 in lost overtime payments.”

The Wage and Hour Lawsuit is Case No. 1:17-cv-02798-WSD in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Atlanta Division.

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