MWD Consulting, Others Sued Over Employees’ Alleged Lack of Overtime Pay

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A proposed class action has been filed against MWD Consulting, Inc.; OPUC.us; AccelWELL, Inc.; Centric HC, Inc.; and two individuals with control over the entities alleging they misclassified certain employees as exempt from Fair Labor Standards Act overtime requirements. The plaintiffs in the case are four former or current “team members” who were paid a fixed salary to perform mostly clerical duties for the joint employers’ insurance brokerage business. The defendants allegedly required the plaintiffs and other team members to work more than 40 hours per week and expected the workers to respond to managers and coworkers outside of regular business hours. Moreover, the lawsuit states the plaintiffs were “often discouraged” from taking lunch breaks.

The plaintiffs allege that despite their long hours, they never received rightful premium time-and-a-half overtime pay due to their exempt status. The suit argues that the team members did not manage other employees, had no “discretion or ability to exercise independent judgment,” and were required to stick to established policies and procedures unless they obtained prior approval, pointing to an employer-employee relationship between team members and the defendants.

“Plaintiffs and team members’ job duties depend primarily on their ability to conform to checklists created for them by supervisors and to operate computer programs not requiring specialized knowledge,” the complaint explains, adding that these characteristics and requirements indicated that the plaintiffs should have been classified as non-exempt employees eligible for overtime pay.