A group of field service engineers have filed a FLSA suit against Alcon Laboratories, on the theory that the company misclassified them as exempt employees.  They seek conditional class certification, alleging that they were consistently denied overtime pay.  The case is entitled Voss v. Alcon Laboratories Inc., and was filed in federal court in the District of Minnesota.

Lab and engineers
Copyright: nd3000 / 123RF Stock Photo

The allegation is that the Company wrongfully classified field service engineers as exempt until the Company changed their classification in 2016.  The plaintiffs seek conditional certification of a class of field service engineers.  The motion for certification asserts that “regardless of their specific job title, Alcon’s field service engineers performed the same primary job duties and were compensated in the same manner.  And despite the fact that they routinely worked over 40 hours per week, they were uniformly classified as exempt and denied proper overtime pay.”

Although they now receive overtime, the employees want back due wages for the period(s) of time they were misclassified.  The lead plaintiff asserts that his duties included installing, repairing, troubleshooting, servicing and maintaining ophthalmic laser equipment.  The Company defended its earlier classification decision by contending that the employees were professionally exempt or fit within the Highly Compensated Employee (HCE) exemption.

But – and it is a big but – at the conditional certification stage, there is a lower burden of proof and the plaintiffs argue that they have met the “fairly lenient” burden of evidence for conditional certification, i.e., a showing that the workers were similarly situated.  The plaintiffs argue that they share the same job duties, FLSA classification and pay structure and that they were all told, via a series of conference calls, about their new classification policy.

The Takeaway

The danger, always, when an employer re-classifies employees and begins to pay them overtime going forward is that the employees will realize that maybe they should have been paid overtime “all along” and will take some action.  In the litigious world in which we live, in the internet world in which we live, where employees can (all too) easily learn about their “rights,” an employer who re-classifies must always anticipate future challenges to its prior reclassification decisions.

One answer.  Compute what the employees are owed for that past overtime and pay them, along with getting the employees to sign releases.  That also brings with it legal issues, as one or more of the people may take that Release to an attorney or seek an attorney’s advice, but if the employer can get most of the people to “take the money and run” on that backdue overtime, the size of any ostensible class has been greatly diminished.