Rite-Aid knows it’s not so much the title you are given, but the work you do. So has the retail chain weighed the odds and decided it is more lucrative to settle a class action suit brought about by approximately 250 assistant managers than to pay them overtime?
And don’t they read the news? Staples recently paid $2.5 million to assistant store managers who claimed they were illegally classified as exempt and therefore owed overtime pay, and in 2002, RadioShack agreed to pay about $30 million to settle a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of current and former RadioShack store managers and assistant managers.
Rite-Aid has been wrong before. Last year, an Oakland attorney filed a suit against Rite-Aid on behalf of more than 1,000 managers and in 2001 those managers (handled by another attorney) were part of a $25 million overtime pay settlement approved by a San Diego Superior Court judge.
If and when this latest overtime class action goes to trial, it is speculated that Rite-Aid, as second-time defendants that willfully violated the California Labor Law, might also be slapped with punitive damages. Cha-ching!