Home Depot Assistant Managers v Home Depot
Judge certifies Home Depot overtime lawsuit a class action
Home Depot assistant managers in California can sue the home improvement company as a class for unpaid overtime, a Riverside California County Superior Court judge has ruled.
The decision stems from three separate lawsuits against Home Depot which were consolidated into one case in Riverside. The lawsuit claims that Home Depot routinely made "merchandising assistant store managers" work at least 55 hours per week and often more.
The class potentially includes more than 2,000 people who served as managers in Home Depot's 186 California stores from July 30, 1997, to the present. Total damages could reach more than $100 million, attorneys for the plaintiffs estimate.
"The amount at issue here could be in the tens of thousands of dollars per member of the class," said an attorney representing the plaintiffs.
The lawsuit claims Home Depot used its assistant managers to sell to customers, stock shelves, travel to other stores to retrieve merchandise – all tasks that are also performed by the hourly workers the managers supervise. The managers performed those tasks more than 50 percent of their shifts, the lawsuit claims, which makes them eligible for overtime pay according to state law.
Home Depot required the managers to perform those tasks in order to avoid the cost of paying sales clerks overtime, the lawsuit claims.
A trial on the merits of the case is set for 2006.
