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Pharmaceutical workers sue for back pay

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published December 28, 2006

HARTFORD, Conn. - Susan Schaefer LaRose quit her sales job in May after 18 years with pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Co., frustrated by long work weeks that frequently encroached on weekends and vacations.

And then she sued.

Her lawsuit, part of a series of class-action claims filed last month against nine major drug companies, seeks tens of millions of dollars in back pay for thousands of drug company salespeople across the country.

"I was told when I started with Eli Lilly that I was exempt from overtime," said Schaefer LaRose, a 50-year-old mother of two from Chittenango, N.Y., about 17 miles east of Syracuse. "I figured they were the large employer, and I never thought to question it."

The lawsuits, filed in New York, California, New Jersey and Connecticut, are the latest in a series of mass tort claims in recent years seeking overtime pay from U.S. businesses. IBM Corp. last month agreed to pay $65-million to 32,000 technology workers who claimed their jobs were wrongly classified as overtime-exempt.

The pharmaceutical company lawsuits seek overtime wages dating back two to six years, under federal and state statutes of limitations. Other companies affected are Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Inc., AstraZeneca PLC, Pfizer Inc., Johnson & Johnson, Amgen Inc., Hoffmann-La Roche Inc., GlaxoSmithKline PLC and Bayer AG.

Some of the companies deny the allegations, while others are reviewing the lawsuits before commenting.

Abby Baron of AstraZeneca said her company adheres to labor laws.

"We intend to defend our position vigorously, and we have the utmost confidence in the legal process," she said.

In the case that Schaefer LaRose is part of, federal labor law allows outside sales forces to be exempt from overtime pay in recognition of the unique abilities offered by a skilled sales staff. Schaefer LaRose said she was able to draw on her skills, using her discretion in how she pitched the company's products to doctors when she started with Lilly in 1988.

But within a decade, drug companies began carefully scripting sales pitches for fear of competitors' lawsuits or scrutiny by the Federal Food and Drug Administration.

"They no longer had that freedom for what the exemption was designed," said New York attorney Charles Joseph, who brought several of the lawsuits. "The job has changed, and it has changed for the worse."

Schaefer LaRose said her 45-hour work weeks began lengthening as cell phones and e-mail became more prevalent. Two co-workers were chastised by a district manager last spring, she said, for not checking their e-mails during vacations. She said Lilly does not allow sales reps to log on to the company's computer system between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., prime hours for calling doctors, which forces reps to do reports on nights and weekends.

Dana Higgs, a plaintiff who worked for Pfizer for more than 20 years, said the increasingly long work weeks have affected families, especially single mothers who have had to make last-minute child-care arrangements and pay caregivers when called to work overtime.

"What they required of us was unfair," said Higgs, who lives in Pennsylvania. "My boss told me that I needed to be engaged in business 24/7."

[Last modified December 27, 2006, 23:08:59]