Quest Diagnostics has been hit with a class action overtime lawsuit by a referral and testing assistant. The nationwide lawsuit accuses the clinical testing company of cheating referral and testing assistants who worked out of any of Quest’s locations throughout the nation in the past four years out o their proper overtime pay.
According to the Complaint, throughout the past four years, Quest made incentive-based payments to its referral and testing assistants. The Complaint alleges that both the Federal Labor Standards Act and California laws consider incentive-based payments to be part of an employee’s regular hourly wages, which means that an employer should consider incentive-based payments in calculating an employee¹s overtime wages. For the past four years, Quest has paid its referral and testing assistants overtime wages for hours worked over forty per workweek at the rate of one and one-half times their regular hourly wage rates. In calculating their regular hourly wage rates, however, Quest did not consider any incentive-based payments that it made to the assistants. The Complaint concludes that, by failing to consider the incentive-based payments as part of the referral and testing assistants¹ regular hourly wages, Quest improperly paid the referral and testing assistants at an improperly reduced overtime hourly rate in violation of the FLSA and California laws.
The class action lawsuit against Quest seeks unpaid overtime wages, penalties, interests, and attorneys’ fees under the FLSA and California law.
