A second lawsuit, setting out the same claims, has been filed by a single plaintiff – that suit also seeks certification as a “collective action” for all persons seeking overtime pay as Dollar General store managers.

Each lawsuit was filed in federal court in Tuscaloosa because the federal court system has established a single “multi district litigation” court to handle all the claims against Dollar General, according to a representative of the law firm handling the case.

According to the attorney handling the case, a similar lawsuit by store managers employed by Family Dollar Stores resulted in a $38 million jury award. That case is currently before the trail court on a motion for a new trial filed by Family Dollar.

The lawyer handling the lawsuit states that assistant managers were misclassified as “executive exemption” of the FLSA. Attorneys claim that the exemption allows companies to pay store managers a set salary and avoid paying them overtime in the event a store manager works more than 40 hours. However, the exemption also requires managers actually perform management duties as their primary function, as opposed to manual labor. The attorney representing the plaintiffs claims "it’s very clear that store managers of discount retail stores like Dollar General don’t qualify as executives.”

Attorneys claims that all the complaints filed against Family Dollar, Dollar General, and Fred’s allege the companies forced managers to work from 60 to 80 hours of manual labor a week as their “primary duty” and that they spent as little as 10 percent of their actual time performing management duties, which results in “free labor” for the companies.

The lawsuit seeks to represent any employee of Dollar General, Family Dollar and Fred's who worked over 40 hours weekly and was not paid for overtime.