Faneuil Miscalculated OT Pay for Call Center Workers Who Earned Bonuses, Lawsuit Alleges

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Faneuil, Inc. faces a proposed collective action that claims its call center employees were not paid proper overtime wages as a result of their bonus not being taken into account during calculation.

Per the case out of Georgia, the defendant, a business-processing outsourcing solutions provider, failed to include certain non-discretionary bonuses as part of workers’ regular pay rates when calculating their time-and-a-half overtime rates. As a result, the workers were underpaid during pay periods in which they worked more than 40 hours per week and received a bonus, the suit claims.

“Defendant’s failure to pay Plaintiff and other members of the [Fair Labor Standards Act] Collective one-and-one-half their regular rates of pay for all time worked in excess of 40 per week was pursuant to a policy and practice Defendant knowingly and intentionally applied to Plaintiff and members of the [Fair Labor Standards Act] Collective,” the complaint alleges, claiming the defendant’s conduct was “willful and not in good faith.”

According to the lawsuit, Faneuil provides “business-processing outsourcing solutions to other organizations, including remote customer care and technical support.” The plaintiff says she has worked for the company as a call center agent since January 2020.

Around 2018 Faneuil, as a means to increase productivity, implemented a “Tiering Incentive Program” through which call center agents and customer service representatives were eligible to receive non-discretionary, performance-based bonuses each month, the lawsuit says. A new tiering incentive program implemented in January 2021 consisted of three tiers into which employees were placed at the end of each month on the basis of their performance as measured by key performance indicators, according to the suit.

Per the case, Tier 1 employees, who received the highest number of points, received the highest bonuses while Tier 3 workers were not eligible for a non-discretionary monthly bonus. Thus, bonuses were calculated according to a predetermined formula, the lawsuit says.

The case alleges that Faneuil, as a “systematic practice,” failed to include non-discretionary bonuses as part of call center workers’ regular pay rates for the purpose of calculating time-and-a-half overtime pay. As a result, the workers received less than the statutory overtime rate when they worked more than 40 hours per week and received a bonus, the suit says.

According to the lawsuit, Faneuil “was, or should have been aware,” that the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) required it to include non-discretionary bonuses as part of workers’ regular rates when calculating overtime wages.

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