PNC Financial Services Call Center Unpaid Work FLSA Class Action

This class action takes issue with the all-too-common requirement that workers perform certain preparatory and finishing-up activities before they begin recording time for their shifts. The defendant is the PNC Financial Services Group, Inc., and the workers are employed at PNC Customer Care Centers.

The Collective FLSA Class for the parts of this action that fall under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) is all current and former CSRs who worked for PNC at its brick-and-mortar call center facilities at any time between February 12, 2016 up through the final judgment in this case.

The Nationwide Class is all current and former SCRs who worked for PNC at its brick-and-mortar call center facilities at any time during the applicable statutory period.

The plaintiffs, Casey Minor and Alexis Yarbrough, are Customer Service and Support Representatives (CSRs), classified as non-exempt hourly employees. They were paid an hourly wage, plus nondiscretionary incentive pay, and normally worked at least five days a week and at least eight hours per day.

Before beginning their shifts, they were required to do preparatory work, including turning on their computers and logging into several software programs and applications that they needed for their work. At the end of the day, they were required to log out of the programs and turn off their computers. The complaint says, “These programs and applications are integral and an important part of the CSRs’ work, and they cannot perform their jobs without them. 

In fact, the complaint notes that the US Department of Labor has issued Fact Sheet #64 to alert workers to some of the abuses that are prevalent in the call center industry, and one of the abuses is the employer’s refusal to pay for work “from the beginning of the first principal activity of the workday to the end of the last principal activity of the workday.” 

The complaint quotes the Fact Sheet as saying, “An example of the first principal activity of the day … includes starting the computer to download work instructions, computer applications and work-related emails.” Also, the Fact Sheet mentions that the FLSA requires a “daily or weekly record of all hours worked, including time spent in pre-shift and post-shift job-related activities, must be kept.”

If the additional pre- and post-shift work is included, this would add up to overtime hours, which are currently not being paid.

In addition, the complaint says, PNC “has strict expectations that its CSRs will remain on the phone during scheduled meal breaks if there are not enough CSRs to cover the phones, if the call center experiences high call volume, or if the CSR is stuck on the phone with a customer…”

Unfortunately, the complaint alleges, PNC “requires its CSRs to record their hours … but prohibits its CSRs from recording time spent performing pre-shift, mid-shift and post-shift work tasks. Failing to accurately account and pay for all of the time actually worked by employees is a clear violation of the FLSA’s record keeping requirements.”

Article Type: Lawsuit
Topic: Employment
Tags: Employment Violations, Inaccurate calculation of breaks, Not Paid for All Hours Worked, Unpaid Overtime