Federal Judge Orders That Ocean State Assistant Manager Should Be Notified of Pending Overtime Class Action

    BOSTON, MA, February 20, 2015 /24-7PressRelease/ -- U.S. District Court Judge Alvin Thompson ordered last month that current and former assistant managers of Ocean State Job Lot in Massachusetts and other New England states be notified of a pending class action lawsuit. The lawsuit claims the discount chain owes the workers for unpaid overtime wages.

The lawsuit is a class and collective action, meaning that all Ocean State Job Lot assistant store managers who held that position at any point between April 2011 and the present in Massachusetts, Connecticut, other New England states and New York can join the suit. Assistant managers and former assistant managers who held the job during that time frame can join by completing a Consent form found on the website of the law firm handling the case. It is also a class action asserting Massachusetts law.

"Both Massachusetts and federal law are designed to ensure that workers receive fair wages," said labor attorney Richard Hayber, who is representing the Bay State workers. "In our lawsuit we claim that Ocean State Job Lot wrongfully applied the executive exemption. We claim that assistant managers are primarily workers - not primarily managers. We believe that these assistant managers are owed back overtime pay when they worked more than forty hours."

Ocean State Job Lot classified its assistant managers exempt under the "executive" exemption under the Massachusetts Overtime Law and the national Fair Labor Standards Act. The exemption allows the employer to pay the employee on a salary basis, but only if their primary duty is management. An employee meeting the exemption is not paid for hours worked, and does not make an overtime rate of time-and-a-half for hours worked over 40 in a week.

However, the exemptions are to be narrowly construed. To meet the executive exemption, an employee must make more than $455 per week, have a primary duty of managing a business or an identifiable division of a business, supervise the work of two or more full-time employees and either have the ability to hire and fire employees or their recommendations about hiring and firing must be given special weight.

The assistant store managers' job duties do not meet this description, the lawsuit alleges. Instead, Ocean State Job Lot assistant store managers spend most of their time stocking shelves, unloading trucks, arranging merchandise and other tasks that do not meet the description of an "executive" under state and federal labor law. The lawsuit claims that their "primary duty" is not management.

These employees should have received time-and-a-half for all hours over 40 that they worked, according to the lawsuit. The class and collection action seeks to recover the wages the assistant store managers earned but were not paid.

The plaintiffs are represented by Boston employment law firm Lichten & Liss-Riordan, P.C. Hayber Law Firm in Connecticut is assisting. Both Hayber Law Firm and Lichten & Liss-Riordan have represented employees in multiple class action lawsuits, in which they have won wages owed due to misclassification. While the case was filed in Boston, Massachusetts, it has been transferred to Connecticut. The transfer does not affect the ability of Massachusetts assistant managers to join.

The case is being heard in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut. Assistant store managers will soon receive court-supervised notice about the suit.

The attorneys for the plaintiffs are working on a contingency basis, meaning they will take their fees and costs from the settlement or judgment won.

Under the laws of both the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the federal government, Ocean State Job Bank may not retaliate in any way against current employees who sign onto the lawsuit by terminating them, demoting them or taking any negative employment action.

Notices are being mailed out of the Boston office of Lichten & Liss-Riordan with directions to return the notice to the firm at:

729 Boylston Street
Suite 2000
Boston, MA 02116

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