Ford Employees Owed Overtime for Meetings Held Outside Shifts, Lawsuit Alleges

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Ford Motor Company faces a proposed collective action wherein a former employee claims the automaker failed to pay him overtime wages for regular pre- and post-shift work.

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The 10-page Ford lawsuit alleges the manufacturer has violated the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) by failing to pay the Ohio plaintiff and other employees proper time-and-a-half overtime wages despite requiring them to arrive early and stay late for pre- and post-shift meetings.

The plaintiff, who worked as a process coach at a Ford plant in Cleveland, says he and other workers had to arrive prior to the scheduled start of their shifts to attend a debriefing about the previous shift. At the end of their eight-hour shifts, the employees had to remain for a similar post-shift meeting, the suit shares.

Thanks to the meetings, which typically lasted 30 minutes each, the plaintiff and other process coaches routinely worked more than 40 hours per workweek, the case contends. However, as they were prohibited from including the pre- and post-shift work on their timecards, the employees were not properly compensated for this extra time, the complaint charges.

The filing claims that although Ford employees arrived early, stayed late and performed work that was “integral and indispensable to their job duties,” they were nevertheless denied overtime wages by the automaker, in violation of the FLSA.

The proposed collective action lawsuit looks to represent any current or former non-exempt Ford Motor Company process coaches who were paid for 40 or more hours of work in any workweek within the past three years.

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