KANSAS CITY – Employees of the janitorial company Crystal Clear Enterprise based in Grandview are seeking class action status in a suit over allegations they were not paid for all hours worked in their 40-hour workweek.
Lead plaintiff Leslie S. Lemanske claims that from April 2017 and March 2018, she worked as an hourly, non-exempt employee as a site supervisor for the defendant but that she and others were consistently required to perform duties during their meal and break periods and not relieved from duty during those periods.
According to the complaint filed May 18 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, any employee who had a shift of four or more hours would automatically have 15 minutes deducted from their paid shift and anyone who worked longer than eight hours would have 45 minutes automatically deducted to account for "rest" and "meal" breaks.
Lemanske claims that under the Fair Labor Standards Act and Missouri law, rest periods of short duration - 5 to 20 minutes - must be counted as hours worked.
The suit states that "while 'bona fide meal periods are not worktime,' the employee must be completely relieved from duty for the purposes of eating regular meals."
"Because of defendant’s pay practices, plaintiff and all similarly situated employees worked 'off the clock' through these automatically deducted rest periods and meal periods," the suit states.
In addition to claiming violations of federal and state labor law regarding alleged "off the clock" violations, the proposed class claims that they were not paid for all overtime hours worked.
"Defendant automatically deducted rest periods of short durations of time (15 minutes) from the total hours worked by employees during their shifts," the suit says.
Attorneys Ryan L. McClelland and Michael J. Rahmberg of the McClelland Law Firm in Liberty represent Lemanske and the proposed class.