Grocery stores are vital for our neighborhoods. They not only provide what we need to survive, but they are a valuable source of employment. Whether a stocker, cashier, deli-hand, assistant manager (or department manager or second-tier manager), each plays an important role. Unfortunately, when it comes to assistant managers – generally salaried employees who are not entitled to receive overtime compensation – they routinely perform the same type of work as their hourly-paid counterparts who, if they work more than 40 hours in a week, receive overtime pay. This work includes ringing customers up on the cash register, helping customers, stocking shelves, completing plan-o-grams, cleaning up spills (and the store), unloading freight from the truck, collecting shopping carts from the car park, and taking out the trash.
To do this, assistant managers often work 50-60 hours a week without being paid overtime. We call this being “misclassified” as exempt (as-in “exempt” from overtime) when, in fact, assistant managers often spend the majority of their time performing the above work. As a result, employers save millions of dollars each year by not properly classifying assistant managers as non-exempt and paying them overtime. This is particularly true where assistant managers have no say over how their store or department is run, do not make hiring and firing decisions, and have little involvement in supervising employees. Misclassifying employees as exempt and denying them overtime compensation is illegal.
In Pennsylvania, and throughout the country, wage and hour laws require that employers pay their non-exempt employees overtime wages equivalent to one-and-a-half times their regular hourly rate for all hours worked above 40 in a week. This can add up to considerable back wages, particularly given that federal and Pennsylvania law permits employees to go back as far as three years to recover their unpaid overtime compensation.
Jason Conway has recovered millions of dollars in unpaid overtime compensation for assistant managers and is currently representing individuals from across the county in connection with such claims. Your work is important. Ensuring that you are properly paid is important to us. If you are owed wages, contact Jason Conway. While we cannot ring you up on the register, we will do our best to ring up your unpaid wages.