Legg Mason Misclassified “Temporary” Employees Collective Action

When does a temporary employee become a regular employee? The complaint for this collective action sues Legg Mason, Inc., Legg Mason & Co., LLC, and Franklin Resources, Inc. which does business as Franklin Templeton, over their classification of an employee as temporary, even though she worked for the companies for more than three years. It alleges violations of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), and the Connecticut General Statutes.

The Collective Action Class is all similarly situated current and former employees employed by the defendants in this case who were misclassified as temporary employees before June 11, 2021.

Plaintiff Belinda Barbieri was hired in February 2017 to serve on a Legg Mason (LM) product marketing team for Global Marketing in its office in Stamford, Connecticut. She was a non-exempt employee with an hourly rate of $85 and an overtime rate of $127.50. She worked there for three and a half years, until she was discharged in August 2020. She worked for LM steadily during that period, without any gaps in her employment.

The complaint alleges that Barbieri “worked on many different projects simultaneously, interacted with many different clients, performed administrative tasks, and did everything a full-time permanent employee on the Product Marketing team did.” She also worked on “highly confidential matters” and was later designated a project manager.

She was given work that was not usually performed by temporary employees, the complaint claims, such as approving and administering consultants’ invoices and expenses and compiling private organizational material. The complaint says the “officers and managers considered [Barbieri] a full-time permanent employee and explicitly told her that she was a full-time permanent employee. In fact, [the companies’] officers and managers promised her that they would correct [the companies’] improper misclassification as a temporary employee but failed to do so.”

She logged her time into the payroll system, like full-time employees did; other non-employees submitted invoices and were not paid through payroll. She had a permanent office space, employee badge, authority to order supplies, and full access to the computer system. Her pay was reported on a Form W-2 rather than on a Form 1099 Misc.

Despite this, she was not able to participate in the Employer Benefit Plans, which included the health benefit plan, 401(k) plan, employee stock option plan, and severance benefit plan. She also did not get paid holiday and vacation time, paid time off, annual bonuses, retention and retention upon sale bonus, severance and severance stub payment, merit increases, outplacement services, and working remotely bonus.

Article Type: Lawsuit
Topic: Employment
Tags: Denial of Benefits, Employment Violations, Misclassifying Employees as Temporary