Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.

Three former Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company employees who filed a $200-million class-action lawsuit against the company claim they were deprived of minimum wages and overtime pay. The plaintiffs filed the lawsuit in federal court in San Diego, alleging Northwest Mutual misclassified them and hundreds of other employees as independent contractors to save money.

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A lawsuit filed by employees against Buffalo Rock Co. of Birmingham, Alabama has been certified as a class action lawsuit, according to a report in the Birmingham News. Workers filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for Birmingham in 2007, alleging the company’s failure to compensate some of its sales and delivery employees for overtime work.

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Misclassification of store managers is a ruse sometimes used by businesses to avoid paying certain employees overtime. As we reported in December, a federal appeals court upheld a $35.6 million judgment against Family Dollar Stores, Inc. for wrongly classifying store employees as managers and then denying them overtime pay. Last week, a federal jury in the U.S. District Court for New Jersey ordered Staples, Inc., the world’s largest chain of office supply stores, to pay nearly $2.5 million to 343 plaintiffs because of similar violations to the Fair Labor Standards Act.

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The U.S. District judge for the District of Kansas ruled this week that thousands of meatpacking workers may move forward against Tyson Foods, Inc. as a class action suit. The workers allege that they were denied overtime and other forms of compensation by the company. The ruling was a positive development for the workers, comprised mainly of Latin American immigrants who couldn’t afford to proceed individually.

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