18th Annual Workplace Class Action Report - 2022 Edition

Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report: 2022 Edition 143 similarly-situated to the proposed collective action members for purposes of conditional certification. For these reasons, the Court granted Plaintiffs’ motion for conditional certification of a collective action. Knecht, et al. v. C & W Facility Services , 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 78849 (S.D. Ohio April 20, 2021) . Plaintiff, an hourly maintenance technician, filed a collective action alleging that Defendant failed to pay overtime compensation in violation of the FLSA. Plaintiff filed a motion for conditional certification of a collective action, which the Court granted in part. Plaintiff contended that Defendant automatically deducted 30 minutes from technicians’ pay for a meal period, regardless of whether or not the employee actually took a meal break. Plaintiff sought to conditional certification of a collective action consisting of “all current and former hourly, non- exempt maintenance employees of Defendant who were scheduled to work 40 or more hours in any workweek during the three (3) years preceding” the filing of the motion and continuing through the final disposition of this case. Id . at *12. Defendant argued that the description of the membership in the proposed collective action was overbroad because it included employees who were not subjected to Defendant’s alleged FLSA violation. The Court agreed. It found that even taking Plaintiff’s allegations as true and assuming that the meal deduction policy itself applied to every hourly, non-exempt maintenance employee, there were no plausible allegations that every such employee was prohibited from taking an uninterrupted meal break and therefore worked in excess of 40 hours without being paid overtime. Id . The Court explained that if conditional certification was proper, it should be limited to hourly, non-exempt maintenance employees who were subject to the meal deduction policy and who, because of that policy, worked more than 40 hours in a given week without being paid overtime. Id . at *13. Defendant also contended that the collective action should not include anyone who worked in California or who punched-in and out for their meal breaks, since such employees would not be similarly-situated to Plaintiff if their 30-minute meal breaks were not deducted via the timekeeping system. Id . The Court rejected this argument. It ruled that at the conditional certification stage, Plaintiff only needed to establish that his position was similar, and not identical, to the positions held by others. The Court further opined that the manner which the 30 minutes was automatically deducted did not affect the issue of whether the automatic deduction itself was in violation of the FLSA if an employee did not take the break. The Court determined that Plaintiff met his burden to show that he was similarly-situated to other hourly employees who were subject to Defendant’s meal break deduction policy, but it limited the collective action to those who worked through a meal break without compensation, and who because of Defendant’s policy, worked over 40 hours in a workweek without receiving overtime compensation. For these reasons, the Court granted in part Plaintiff’s motion for conditional certification of a collective action. Kopp, et al. v. Precision Broadband Installations , 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 121713 (N.D. Ohio June 30, 2021). Plaintiff, a cable installer, filed a collective action alleging that Defendant failed to pay for all hours worked in violation of the FLSA. Plaintiff contended that installers regularly worked over 40 hours in a workweek, but were paid on a piece-rate basis that failed to account for overtime hours. Plaintiff filed a motion for conditional certification of a collective action, which the Court granted. Plaintiff sought conditional certification of a collective action consisting of all cable installers who worked for Defendant from December 16, 2017, to the present. In support of his motion, Plaintiff offered declarations from 17 opt-in Plaintiffs. Each declarant averred that they were a cable installer for Defendant and named the dates and locations where they worked. Id . at *5. The declarants also all asserted that Defendant did not allow them to accurately report hours worked and, in turn, did not properly compensate them for hours worked. Id . In opposition, Defendant submitted its own declarations from two current employees that stated that Defendant had policies in place requiring accurate timekeeping and appropriate overtime pay. The Court opined that Defendant’s declarations were more suitable for assessment at the second stage of the case dealing with possible decertification and were not appropriate at the first stage of conditional certification. The Court determined that Plaintiff sufficiently established that he was similarly-situated to other cable installers such that conditional certification was appropriate. For these reasons, the Court granted Plaintiff’s motion for conditional certification of a collective action. Kuchar, et al. v. Saber Healthcare Holdings, LLC, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 127859 (N.D. Ohio July 9, 2021). Plaintiff, a minimum data set ("MDS") nurse, filed a collective action alleging that Defendants misclassified MDS nurses as FLSA-exempt, required employees to underreport their hours, and automatically deducted lunch breaks from employees’ hours, even when the employees did not take a full lunch break, in violation of the FLSA. Plaintiffs sought conditional certification of two collective actions, including: (i) salaried MDS nurses and