BJ’s Wholesale Club Managers Shortchanged on Overtime Pay, Lawsuit Claims

Two BJ’s employees from Florida say the warehouse retail club has left them shortchanged on overtime pay.

Plaintifffs Jodi Farrell-Canizaro and Kelly Sullivan, two mid-level managers who work for defendant BJ’s Wholesale Club Inc., say they and others like them were shortchanged on overtime pay due to a misclassification by their employer.

The plaintiffs argue BJ’s should have recognized them as “non-exempt” employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act, or FLSA.

According to the plaintiffs, BJ’s is a Massachusetts-based members-only retail club that operates over 185 warehouse retail locations in Florida and other states.

Plaintiffs Say Misclassification Left Them Shortchanged on Overtime Pay

Sullivan and Farrell-Canizaro argue that even though their job titles identified them as “managers,” the nature of the work they were expected to perform was of a type that should qualify them for overtime pay under the FLSA.

They say their work duties included cashiering, unloading trucks, general customer service, collecting shopping carts and boxes, stocking inventory, and janitorial work – all work of a nature that qualifies for FLSA overtime wage protections, they claim.

At the same time, and despite the wording of their job titles, they were not assigned the types of tasks consistent with jobs that are exempt from FLSA protection. Their job tasks “did not include significant managerial responsibilities or exercise of independent judgment, involved very little actual supervisory duties, and required little skill and no capital investment,” they allege.

Both Sullivan and Farrell-Canizaro say they routinely were expected to work 55 to 60 hours per week with no additional pay over their regular salaries. BJ’s failure to pay them additional wages equivalent to one-and-a-half times their regular rate of pay left them shortchanged on overtime pay, they argue.

The plaintiffs believe BJ’s has similarly underpaid an entire class of its mid-level managers across the country.

They allege BJ’s has applied the same policy to employees with job titles like Loss Prevention Managers, Membership Acquisition and Retention Managers, Bakery Managers, Perishable Managers, store Human Resources Managers, Asset Control Managers, Receiving Managers, and others.

Prior overtime lawsuits have led to millions of dollars in settlement liability for BJ’s. In 2013, the company settled a claim by a group of managers for $2.7 million. And in 2009, a group of about 1,500 managers who claimed they were shortchanged on overtime pay ended in a settlement worth $9.3 million.

Farrell-Canizaro and Sullivan are proposing to represent a collective plaintiff Class that consists of all salaried mid-level managers who worked for BJ’s anywhere in the U.S. at any time during the three years before this BJ’s class action lawsuit was filed and who were not paid at the time-and-a-half rate for hours worked in excess of 40 per week.

Since their claim is a collective action under the FLSA, proposed members will have to affirmatively opt in to participate in this wage and hour class action lawsuit. They expect that over 1,000 other BJ’s employees may be eligible to join the plaintiff Class.

The BJ’s Wholesale Club Wage and Hour Class Action Lawsuit is Jodi Farrell-Canizaro, et al. v. BJ’s Wholesale Club Inc., Case No. 0:16-cv-62708 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

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