Customer Service Reps Claim Marriott Denied Pay for Pre-, Post-Shift Work

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Marriott International, Inc. faces a proposed collective action in which two former employees claim they and similarly situated customer service representatives were not paid for pre- and post-shift work or at the correct overtime rate.

More specifically, the 23-page lawsuit out of Maryland claims reservation agents, loyalty care specialists, rewards representatives and other customer service reps were not compensated for time spent logging into and out of their computers before and after each shift and during unpaid lunch periods.

According to the case, the global hotel operator was responsible under the Fair Labor Standards Act to pay for work “from the beginning of the first principal activity of the workday to the end of the last principal activity of the workday,” which includes login/logout activities performed off the clock.

The lawsuit alleges that employees are trained or instructed by Marriott to not clock in until they have logged into their computers and opened all essential work-related computer programs “so they can be prepared to take calls the moment they begin their shift.” 

Per the complaint, Marriott acknowledged in 2018 that it knew employees were performing off-the-clock work by granting them a 10-minute grace period to boot up and shut down their computers. The plaintiffs claim, however, that the grace period was “grossly insufficient” to cover the amount of off-the-clock work performed each day.

As the lawsuit tells it, customer service reps’ pre-shift work—which the case notes is an “integral and indispensable” part of the workers’ job responsibilities—took between 12 to 15 minutes each day, and even longer when the defendant’s computer networks and programs were not working properly.

At the end of each shift, employees allegedly spent five to six minutes logging out of their computers and filling out time adjustment forms if they were “stuck on the phone” during their lunch periods.

Moreover, workers spent an additional four to five minutes during each lunch break logging back into their computers and software so they could be prepared to begin taking calls as soon as their break was over, the suit says.

According to the case, Marriott was aware of the amount of time employees spent on off-the-clock work yet failed to “make any effort to stop or disallow this pre-, mid and post-shift work and instead suffered and permitted it to happen.”

Per the complaint, Marriott’s failure to compensate employees for their off-the-clock activities deprived the workers of straight time and overtime wages. The case alleges that when employees did receive overtime, Marriott failed to include commissions and other incentive pay as part of the workers’ regular rates and thereby miscalculated their time-and-a-half overtime rates.

The lawsuit looks to cover anyone who worked as a customer service representative for Marriott in the U.S. within the past three years.

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