A judge has yet to certify the class in a case seeking overtime pay for photo lab managers, but the number of plaintiffs is likely to increase.
By MARK ALBRIGHT
Published December 25, 2003
After 50 Eckerd Corp. photo lab managers and supervisors claimed they were cheated out of overtime, a federal judge hearing a class-action lawsuit in Fort Myers has ordered notification of all the people who were photo managers for the drugstore chain since Nov. 13, 2000.
U.S. District Judge John Steele made the ruling in the preliminary rounds of a suit alleging that the nation's fourth largest drugstore chain violated federal labor standards law by denying photo lab managers and supervisors overtime.
After the case was filed in September on behalf of five Eckerd photo lab managers in southwest Florida, publicity attracted 45 more plaintiffs from Florida, North Carolina and Texas to join the suit.
Eckerd, which has its headquarters in Largo, operates photo labs in most of its 2,760 drugstores in 23 states.
Federal law defines which hourly employees are entitled to overtime and which managers and professions are salaried and exempt from overtime.
The chain contends thousands of its lab managers and supervisors are salaried.
The lawsuit says managers and supervisors must sign a "fluctuating work week" agreement when they take the job. It says they will be paid a base salary if they work fewer than 40 hours a week. But if they work more than that, they are paid for no more than 40 hours.
The suit claims Eckerd should be paying the lab managers time and a half for each hour over 40. It also says Eckerd didn't consistently follow its "fluctuating work week" policy. Some lab managers say they were paid for less than 40 hours a week if they did not work that many hours. Others say the chain flouted the law by routinely ordering them to work far more than 40 hours a week.
Steele has yet to certify the class, the most critical early step in a class-action lawsuit.
He ordered Eckerd to provide lists of current and former lab managers and supervisors for a mailing that would allow them to join the case as well.
Eckerd attorneys argued that the company followed the law and that the plaintiffs offered insufficient proof that it did not.
