Lawsuit Claims SmileDirectClub ‘Shaved Time’ from Workers’ Hours, Owes Unpaid Wages

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SmileDirectClub, LLC faces a proposed collective and class action in which the teledentistry company is accused of failing to pay employees proper wages and provide uninterrupted meal periods.

According to the lawsuit, the defendant employs a practice of “shaving time” from employees work hours for its own benefit. This practice, the suit says, has resulted in employees being deprived of pay for every hour worked, including overtime hours, in violation of federal and state law.

“Defendant’s failure to compensate its hourly paid, non-exempt employees for compensable work performed each workweek, including but not limited to at an overtime rate of pay, was intentional, willful, and violated federal law as set forth in the [Fair Labor Standards Act] and state law as set forth in the [Wisconsin wage and payment and collection laws],” the complaint alleges.

The plaintiff in the case works for SmileDirectClub, a teledentistry company that manufactures and sells aligners, in the position of “Smile Guide” at the defendant’s Brookfield, Wisconsin location. Per the suit, the plaintiff and other hourly paid, non-exempt employees are required to clock in and out of their shifts using the defendant’s electronic timekeeping system. The lawsuit alleges, however, that SmileDirectClub has a practice of rounding employees’ hours to “shave” time from their compensable hours and therefore reduce the workers’ wages.

Moreover, employees are not provided with uninterrupted 30-minute meal breaks given they are required to clock back in before their breaks are over to ensure they have enough time to return to their work stations and continue working, the complaint alleges. As a result, the workers have been deprived of full 30-minute breaks and wages for the time they spent working after clocking back in, the suit says.

“For example,” the complaint states, “if Plaintiff or any other hourly-paid, non-exempt employee ‘clocked out’ for his/her meal period on any given work day and then ‘clocked back in’ at the end of his/her meal period twenty (20) consecutive minutes thereafter in order to return to work at Defendant (and to immediately begin performing compensable work), Defendant failed to compensate said employees for not only the on duty meal period itself that lasted less than thirty (30) consecutive minutes in duration (i.e., twenty (20) minutes), but also for the compensable hours worked and work performed immediately after ‘clocking back in’ at the end of the meal period and prior to the conclusion of the scheduled meal period (i.e., failing to compensate said employees for ten (10) minutes of work performed if the scheduled meal period was for thirty (30) minutes in duration).”

The lawsuit alleges the defendant’s pay practices have resulted in employees being owed both unpaid regular wages and overtime wages for weeks in which they worked more than 40 hours.

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