Class Action Claims Community Options Owes Workers Unpaid Overtime Due to ‘Time-Shaving’ Practices

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Community Options, Inc. and Community Options New York, Inc. are on the receiving end of a proposed class action wherein a former employee claims she and others were not paid proper overtime wages.

More specifically, the case alleges the national nonprofit and its New York counterpart, which provide residential and employment support for people with severe developmental and intellectual disabilities, have subjected non-exempt hourly paid staff members to an unlawful “time shaving” policy whereby their hours were manually edited to reflect that they worked no more than 40 hours per week.

The plaintiff says she began her employment in the defendants’ Brooklyn office in January 2019 as a program manager, overseeing 11 direct support professionals who provided services to severely disabled clients on-site as part of the nonprofit’s Day Habilitation program. Between April 2019 and February 2020, the plaintiff worked in another role as a senior staffer due to the defendants’ budgetary concerns, after which she returned to her original job until her termination in September, according to the suit.

Per the complaint, the plaintiff and hourly paid staff members were required to clock in and out through an electronic timekeeping system called Kronos. Beginning in December 2019, workers in the defendants’ Brooklyn office were notified via email that they were required to clock in and out at the start and end of their shifts without working overtime. According to the case, any overtime hours required approval by management, and failure to adhere to the new overtime policy would result in disciplinary action.

The plaintiff relays, however, that many staff members often worked more than 40 hours per week to fulfill their job duties and responsibilities. For example, workers who drove the company-owned vehicles to transport clients to and from their homes were often forced to spend 20 minutes to an hour looking for parking near the office upon their return since there were no company-owned parking spaces, the case says. Moreover, workers were sometimes required to stay past the end of their shifts to wait for other employees to fill out required overtime paperwork or return the company car keys, the lawsuit explains.

According to the suit, employees noticed that their recorded clock-out times were being edited in the Kronos system to the extent that the hours in the system did not accurately reflect the number of hours they worked in excess of 40 each week. The plaintiff says she witnessed at least two occasions on which the office’s executive director manually changed staff members’ clock-out times to 3:00 p.m., the time their shifts were scheduled to end, if the relevant paperwork was missing or unsatisfactory, or if the worker forgot to clock in for the day.

The plaintiff says she complained to her manager on several occasions regarding the unpaid overtime but was eventually terminated in retaliation for her complaints.

The lawsuit alleges the defendants were well aware that employees were putting in overtime hours yet failed to properly record the work time and engaged in time-shaving to avoid having to pay the proper overtime compensation.

“Defendants were aware or should have been aware that the law required it to pay nonexempt employees, including Plaintiff and Collective Class Members, an overtime premium of 1.5 times their regular rate of pay for all work hours Defendants suffered or permitted them to work in excess of 40 per workweek,” the complaint reads. “Defendants’ conduct was willful and in bad faith, and has caused significant damage to Plaintiff and Collective Class Members during the Collective Period.”

The plaintiff looks to represent a proposed class consisting of anyone who has been employed by the defendants as hourly paid staff in Brooklyn at any time within the past six years and through the date of final disposition of the lawsuit and worked more than 40 hours in at least one workweek but did not receive proper overtime pay due to the defendants’ practices as alleged in the lawsuit.

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