Home Depot Sued for Overtime Wages

The lawsuit filed July 21 in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, seeks class action status, and accuses Home Depot of deliberately misclassifying the plaintiffs as “exempt” from overtime, Reuters reports. The three plaintiffs say they were unlawfully deprived of wages when Home Depot required them to work at least 55 hours per week and they were not paid time and a half for their hours over 40.

The lawsuit also accused Home Depot of having a policy of terminating assistant store managers and reducing their salaries if they do not work the 11-hour minimum shift for which assistant managers are scheduled, according to the news report. The suit claims that the practice is widespread at Home Depot and affects all of the company’s assistant managers in Illinois.

The lawsuit is seeking past unpaid wages and punitive damages.

Home Depot told Reuters it could not comment as it had not yet seen the lawsuit.

T-Mobile (see T-Mobile Hit with OT Payments Suit ) and Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. (see Northwestern Mutual Faces Overtime Suit ) have also recently been hit with overtime suits.

A recent report suggests employers around the country are facing an increasing amount of litigation from on-call employees who claim companies are restricting their freedom too much and not paying them for it (see Employers Now More Liable for On-Call Comp Suits ).