Judge grants Conditional Certification of Collective Action in the Northern District of Texas

Judge grants Conditional Certification of Collective Action in the Northern District of Texas
Lo v. XPO Logistics-SC of Texas, LLC, and XPO Logistics, Inc. Case No: 4:17-cv-674

On August 15, 2017, Lead Plaintiff Mr. Lo, on behalf of himself and those similarly situated, filed a collective action lawsuit in United States District Court – Northern District of Texas against his employer, XPO Logistics-SC of Texas, LLC and XPO Logistics, Inc. alleging willful violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”), including, but not limited to the failure of Defendants to compensate Plaintiff for overtime wages. The factual allegations of the case are summarized as follows:

• Defendants employed Plaintiff to work as a non-exempt, salaried “operations supervisor” from July 6, 2015 until July 17, 2016;
• Throughout his employment, Plaintiff’s primary duties consisted of pulling equipment on a production line, transporting material to different places within the Defendants’ production facility in Fort Worth, Texas, and working side-by-side with other assembly-line employees;
• Defendants required Plaintiff to routinely work over forty hours each week;
• Defendants paid Plaintiff a weekly salary for all hours worked up to forty hours each week and no wages whatsoever for Plaintiff’s first ten hours of overtime each week;
• Defendants paid Plaintiff at his straight-time rate of pay for all hours worked beyond fifty each week;
• Defendants’ management instituted a company-wide policy of denying overtime compensation to all operations supervisors.

Straight-time rate, an amount equal to an employee’s base rate of pay, is particularly important because when a non-exempt employee works over forty hours in a work-week, the employer is required by law to pay the employee at 1.5x his/her straight-time rate of pay for each hour worked in excess of forty. The additional pay is called the overtime rate. In this case, Defendants paid Plaintiff a salary intended to cover only the first forty hours he worked per week and no overtime premium for the first ten hours of overtime work. While Defendants did pay Plaintiff for the hours he worked in excess of fifty in a work-week, they paid him at his straight-time rate of pay, instead of his overtime rate of pay, as the FLSA requires. Thus, Defendants violated the law both by failing to pay Plaintiff at any rate of pay for the first ten hours of overtime work and by failing to compensate Plaintiff at the proper rate of pay for all hours beyond their first fifty.

Certification of Collective Action

In each collective case, pursuant to the request of the plaintiff, the judge reviews the claims that the plaintiff brings forward alleging that there are additional workers in “the Collective” (performing the same or similar duties) who have been victimized by the pattern, practice, and policy of the defendants that is in violation of the FLSA. After reviewing the facts of this case, District Judge Reed O’ Connor found that Plaintiffs met their burden of establishing that there are similarly situated potential “Members of the Collective.” On April 30, 2018, Judge Reed O’ Connor granted “conditional certification” allowing the case to proceed as a nationwide collective action enabling any other workers throughout the nation who were not paid properly to join the lawsuit and seek redress for the Defendants’ failure to pay them in accordance with the law.

If you or a person you know worked for the Defendants named in the lawsuit during the time period of December 4, 2014– present or has information that may be relevant to this case, contact Borrelli & Associates, P.L.L.C. as soon as possible through our website, www.employmentlawyernewyork.com, or by calling any of our phone numbers: (516) 248-5550, (516) ABOGADO, and (212) 679-5000.