The Birmingham Business Journal reported that the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia granted class action status to a lawsuit filed by workers of Bellsouth Telecommunications against AT&T Inc. The workers are claiming that they are owed $1billion in overtime pay.
This ruling is the third approved overtime class-action that alleges that AT&T and its subsidiaries violated state laws and Federal Fair Labor Standards Act “by carrying out a company-wide policy to wrongly misclassify thousands of its Level One Managers exempt from overtime wages.”
The ruling applies to First Level employees in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, North Carolina, Louisiana, South Carolina and Kentucky. But because of the ruling, “First Levels in nearly every state where AT&T and its subsidiaries do business are now eligible to participate in class actions seeking some $1 billion in unpaid overtime wages.”
