A $1.82 Million Settlement for approximately 300 misclassified customer support employees who worked for Interactive Brokers was recently approved by a federal court in Illinois. Three former customer support workers sued Interactive Brokers, alleging that they worked between forty-three to fifty hours per workweek and that they were not paid overtime compensation for time worked in excess of forty hours per workweek. They also alleged that Interactive Brokers failed to maintain records of the time worked each week by all of the workers.
The employees claimed that they should have been paid overtime compensation because their “main responsibilities were to interact with customers who contacted Interactive Brokers with customer service issues.” The employees also alleged that they did not regularly take meal breaks or other breaks; instead, they ate at their desks and continued to work.
Generally, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and state labor laws require all employers to pay employees an overtime premium (1.5 times their regular rate) for every hour worked beyond forty hours per workweek. However, some employees may be exempt from the overtime requirements if they perform certain tasks which are considered “exempt” under the FLSA and state labor laws.
“Exempt” tasks may include hiring, supervising, scheduling, conducting performance reviews, creating policies, compliance oversight, vendor management, legal, medical, accounting, engineering work, writing, graphic design, music composition, Systems analysis, software development, programming, client visits, and off-site sales presentations.
However, determining whether an employee is exempt under the labor laws, requires a deep and holistic analysis, which may consider job titles and salary. Some of the most common misclassified job titles include account executives, customer success executives, growth executives, sales representatives, inside sales representatives, customer success managers, and assistant managers.
The Interactive Brokers settlement is a cautionary tale for employers that misclassifying their employees can result in substantial liability. For example, in 2021, PR tech giant Meltwater agreed to pay its sales employees $14.5 million to settle their misclassification claims. In 2020, Panera Bread was ordered to pay $4.6 million in unpaid overtime wages to more than 900 workers who were classified as Assistant Managers. In 2018, Bloomberg LP paid $54.5 million to settle claims for a class of help desk representatives that were misclassified as “exempt” employees.
If you believe that you have been misclassified as “exempt” and are therefore entitled to overtime pay, feel free to reach out to an attorney at Pechman Law Group.
