Unpaid Wages Settlement Affects Call Center

An Illinois federal judge recently approved an unpaid wages settlement affecting call center employees. This $265,000 deal in the unpaid wages settlement was brought about as a result of employees coming forward who claim that they were not being fairly paid for their time.

The allegedly unpaid computer work involved the call centers of a healthcare company. The plaintiff argued that the money going to the employees did not appropriately compensate them for their work.

There were more than 549 members of the Class in the unpaid wages lawsuit. The Class was also certified in the ruling, arguing that approximately $6 should be paid in the unpaid wages settlement for every week the Class Member worked between April 2013 and September 2017. Additionally, attorney’s fees were awarded for the plaintiffs who came forward with the initial lawsuit.

The unpaid wages settlement came about as a result of a 2016 lawsuit filed by the employees who alleged that the Centene Company work required them to log into their system early and the company discipline them if they were not ready to handle calls by the beginning of their shift; however, they were not paid for the time they spent getting ready.

Approximately 10 million people received health care plans through Centene across the country and the policy mandated by the company required those employees to be logged into the company’s phone systems and computers before their scheduled start time. That meant employees had to engage in computer boot up, initialization of software and management of company emails when they were technically off the clock and not being paid for their work.

The employees came together to file a complaint that ultimately led to the unpaid wages settlement by arguing that the company was persistently engaged in this type of behavior in violation of wage and hour laws.

The employees in the unpaid wages settlement also argued that they had to perform similar work during their lunch break, which was an unpaid 30-minute period every time they worked a long shift.

They alleged that the total amount of unpaid work was approximately 10 minutes every single day. The underlying allegations were that the Centene Company willfully failed to appropriately compensate their call center workers while benefitting from the profits gleaned from the additional work being completed.

While this unpaid work may have only been 10 minutes per day, it added up to a lot for each employee and across all the employees asked to engage in unpaid work.

More legal cases have included allegations of unpaid wages due to off the clock work that must be completed by employees before or after their official shift. Other claims of unpaid work may include overtime due to people who worked beyond forty hours in a workweek. Employees who discover that they have been putting in time for which they were not being properly paid may investigate state or federal labor laws to recover compensation through a lawsuit.

The Centene Company Unpaid Wages Lawsuit is Case No. 1:16-CV-04693, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

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