Santa Clara, CA: A $2.1 million settlement has been approved in an unpaid overtime class action lawsuit brought by Texas and Missouri call center employees against the publisher of the Yellow Pages.
Brought in 2014 by call center employees in Dallas, Fort Worth and Olivette, Mo., the suit alleged that the Yellow Pages failed to pay the plaintiffs time and a half for overtime and that their commission chargebacks were also miscalculated.
Christopher Dinkins, lead plaintiff in the class action, alleged managers instructed the class members to keep submitting timesheets after a computerized system was installed.
"Furthermore, sales representatives were generally instructed by management to not log in before 8:00 a.m., to log out for a one hour lunch, and to log out at 5:00 p.m. in a typical workday even though management knew/had reason to believe that sales representatives typically worked longer hours than that," the complaint stated. "At times, when sales representatives were in a log in status outside of those time parameters, managers would manually alter the login/logout data to reflect less hours worked than were actually worked."
Managers also told workers to research new clients and sales opportunities at night and on weekends, according to the complaint.
The judge has granted approval to the settlement and under its terms, YP Advertising and YP Texas Region Yellow Pages will drop a fraud counterclaim alleging "misrepresentations they [the plaintiffs] made in the sales process" while they were employed.
