ST. LOUIS (St. Louis Record) – A former call center employee recently filed a Fair Labor Standards Act (FSLA) collective class action against Clayton-based Serco Inc., claiming the company required her and others to work overtime unpaid.
"Specifically, Serco has enforced a uniform company-wide policy wherein it improperly required its hourly call-center employees – plaintiff and the putative class members - to perform work off-the-clock and without pay," Mar’Bella Sandoval said in her collective class action lawsuit filed Sept. 17 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missour. "Serco's company-wide policy has caused plaintiff and the putative class members to have hours worked that were not compensated and further created a miscalculation of their regular rate(s) of pay for purposes of calculating their overtime compensation each workweek."
Sandoval claims that she and other class members routinely worked more than 40 hours per week but were not paid overtime.
"Serco has knowingly and deliberately failed to compensate plaintiff and the putative class members for all hours worked each workweek and the proper amount of overtime on a routine and regular basis during the relevant statutes of limitation," the lawsuit said. "Plaintiff and the putative class Members did not (and currently do not) perform work that meets the definition of exempt work under the FLSA or Missouri state law."
Sandoval filed the complaint on behalf of all current and former hourly call-center workers employed by Serco during relevant statutes of limitation through the final disposition of the case. Sandoval seeks to recover overtime wages, liquidated damages, attorneys' fees and costs.
The case is assigned to U.S. District Judge John Andrew Ross.
The case was filed on Sandoval's behalf by Texas attorneys Clif Alexander, Austin W. Anderson with Anderson Alexander PLLC and Sarah Jane Hunt with Thomas E. Kennedy III LC in St. Louis under case no. 4:18-cv-01562-JAR