Walgreens Settles Call Center Workers' Unpaid OT Suit

Chicago, ILA lawsuit filed in late 2021 by former Walgreeens call center workers has been settled. The plaintiffs claimed they, and other customer service representatives, were required to work without compensation before and after their shifts, such as starting up and logging into computer systems. Working off-the-clock is in violation of state and federal wage laws. 

The $460,000 agreement between Walgreens Specialty Pharmacy LLC and Walgreens workers was signed off early December by U.S. District Judge Lindsay C. Jenkins. According to Law360, about $285,150 will be distributed among workers who agree to participate in the settlement -- eight workers have already opted in as plaintiffs and 302 others are eligible to participate in the settlement. Lead plaintiffs Brittney Walker and Dushanna Jones (former employees who asked the court to approve the settlement) will also each receive $5,000 for leading the case. About $153,30 of the settlement amount will go toward attorney fees and about $5,310 will pay for litigation expenses, while the remaining $6,200 will compensate the settlement administrator.

Brittney Walker initially filed the lawsuit and Jones joined as a named plaintiff in February 2022. Their lawsuit states that they spent from 20 to 30 minutes every day logging in and out of Walgreens’ computers, software applications and phone system, in addition the 40 hours per week they worked and clocked into the timekeeping system. The time they spent off-the-clock amounts to overtime, they argued.

In August 2023, Walgreens attempted to push Walker's claims into arbitration or dismiss Jones and Walker's FLSA collective action claim. However, Walker signed an arbitration agreement that didn't cover her claims against Walgreens, and Walgreens' attempt to dismiss the FLSA claim was “essentially a challenge to the scope of the collective action, which would be better addressed at a later date,” reported Law360.

The case is Walker et al. v. Walgreens Specialty Pharmacy LLC, case number 1:21-cv-05780, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

Walgreens vs. Call Center Workers – Again

A complaint filed under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) against the drug store giant about a year before Walker’s lawsuit is almost identical to the above. Leyla Marie Cortes Olazagasti began working in Walgreens’ call center in Orlando, Fla., in November 2019. Just like Walker and Jones, she worked up to four hours “off-the-clock” per week and was not been compensated for that time. According to Olazagasti’s lawsuit, workers are required to start and log-in to their computer, open and initiate multiple different Walgreens computer programs, log in to each Walgreens program, and ensure that each Walgreens program is running correctly—all of which can take up to twenty minutes—before they are allowed to clock in on the time keeping software application and then take their first phone call – which is Walgreens’s corporate policy and practice. Further, Olazagasti said call center workers’ computers crashed multiple times each week and resetting them took approximately 10 minutes or more each time, which they were not paid for.

Clock out for Lunch and Rest Breaks

Walgreens rest break policy requires breaks to be off-the-clock--so employees even had to clock out for rest breaks lasting twenty minutes or less. Olazagasti said in her lawsuit that Walgreens permits two fifteen-minute breaks each day but requires workers to clock out for any and all breaks taken outside the two fifteen-minute breaks. Wait, it gets worse:

Although Walgreens provides workers with one unpaid lunch break per shift, workers are required to:

• Perform “off-the-clock” work during their unpaid lunch breaks.
• Stay on the clock and on call until the minute their lunch break began, clock out, then log out of the phone system or otherwise go into an aux mode, and then log off of their computer prior to leaving their desk for lunch.
• Log back into their computer, log back into the phone system, then clock in, and be back on the phone right at the moment their lunch break ends.

In 2014, Walgreens Co. paid $23 million to settle nine consolidated wage and hour class action lawsuits filed in California federal court. The settlement resolved allegations that the pharmacy chain failed to pay employees overtime for mandatory security checks and failed to provide adequate breaks. In 2018, the #1 American pharmacy chain was again back in court: Walgreens settled a wage and labor class action lawsuit for its California employees in the sum of $4.5 million.

The Economic Policy Institute states that employers steal billions from workers’ paychecks each year. Wage theft takes many forms, such as these Walgreens’ cases.

Wage theft is the failure to pay workers the full wages to which they are legally entitled. Wage theft can take many forms, including but not limited to:

• Minimum wage violations: Paying workers less than the legal minimum wage
• Overtime violations: Failing to pay nonexempt employees time-and-a-half for hours worked in excess of 40 hours per week
• Off-the-clock violations: Asking employees to work off-the-clock before or after their shifts
• Meal break violations: Denying workers their legal meal breaks
• Pay stub and illegal deductions: Taking illegal deductions from wages or not distributing pay stubs
• Tipped minimum wage violations: Confiscating tips from workers or failing to pay tipped workers the difference between their tips and the legal minimum wage
• Employee misclassification violations: Misclassifying employees as independent contractors to pay a wage lower than the legal minimum