Employee Misclassification Claim Leads to Lawsuit Against Walgreens

A former store manager has brought an employee misclassification claim against Walgreens, alleging he and other managers are owed overtime pay.

Plaintiff Alfred M. filed the employee misclassification lawsuit as a proposed class action due to claims of failure to pay premiums for missed rest breaks, violations of California labor codes and failure to pay overtime.

As alleged in the employee misclassification lawsuit, the plaintiff spent the majority of his time performing the hourly tasks of a pharmacy technician and a cashier when compared with the time he spent managing the store. During those periods, according to his employee misclassification claim, he worked overtime hours. Existing California laws entitle employees to overtime wages as well as to paid rest breaks.

As explained in the employee misclassification lawsuit, however, Alfred and other people who may be included as Class Members were not appropriately paid their overtime wages, and the claim alleges that legally required breaks were not included as well. According to the employee misclassification lawsuit, Walgreens owes the plaintiff and other class members penalties unpaid wages, interests and attorneys’ fees.

Misclassification of an employee can occur when workers don’t receive benefits that they should be entitled to because the employer has improperly categorized the primary nature of the work done by that person. Misclassifying an employee as “exempt” may deprive the employee of protections like minimum and overtime wages.

Alfred alleges that although he and other managers were compensated like exempt employees, the nature of the work they did made them non-exempt. He alleges in his employee misclassification claim that he did not regularly exercise independent judgement or discretion on matters of significance.

The employee misclassification claim, additionally, seeks to represent a Class of individuals who were employed by Walgreens as store managers in California from four years prior to the filing of his lawsuit until the date of certification as well as the sub-class of those employees whose working status was terminated by Walgreens from the period of four years prior to his filing of the lawsuit and the date of certification.

The employee misclassification claim says that Alfred and other store managers were regularly and most frequently engaged in unspecialized tasks rather than the administrative, executive or professional tasks at the time that they were employed by Walgreens.

Store managers regularly worked at least 8 hours on a given work day, he alleges, but managers are also required to work overtime hours every month.

Store managers, according to the employee misclassification claim, are paid by Walgreens on a salary basis with no premium provided for overtime work, despite the fact that Alfred alleges that he and other Class Members served a majority of their job duties in unspecialized and manual tasks.

According to the employee misclassification claim, Walgreens intentionally failed to provide the plaintiff and other store managers with the necessary number of required breaks, including a 10-minute rest break for every four hours worked. The lawsuit seeks compensation in addition to representing the class.

The Employee Misclassification Lawsuit is Case No. CGC-18-570597, filed in the Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco.

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