John Stewart
Wed, 02/21/2024
On February 9, 2024, a “Fleet Deckhand” working for Archer-Daniels-Midland Company, a food processing company, filed suit against his employer in the Northern District of Illinois, seeking unpaid overtime, liquidated damages, and attorneys’ fees. In the lawsuit, the Fleet Deckhand has claimed, on behalf of himself and all others similarly situated, that his employer misclassified its “Day Rate Workers” as FLSA-exempt seamen, thereby depriving them of the overtime pay to which they are entitled under the law.
According to the allegations in the complaint, ADM instead perpetrated a “uniform day rate pay scheme” in which it pays certain employees, including Fleet Deckhands, a “day rate” that remains the same regardless of how many hours are worked. This is unlawful, the complaint asserts, because the Day Rate Workers, like Fleet Deckhands, are improperly classified by ADM as overtime-exempt “seamen.” Under the FLSA, however, an employee is only exempt from federal overtime protections as a seamen when he or she “performs . . . service which is rendered primarily as an aid in the operation of [a] vessel as a means of transportation, provided he [or she] performs no substantial amount of work of a different character.” 29 C.F.R. § 783.31. The complaint asserts that, instead, the plaintiff primarily performed work “loading and unloading coal onto and off ADM’s barges from the dock using a belt line system in the Port of Indiana-Mount Vernon,” and is therefore non-exempt and entitled to overtime pay at one and one-half times his regular rate of pay, for all work performed in excess of 40 hours in a workweek.
This case serves as an important reminder that job titles and employer classifications can be wrong. It is easy to take for granted that it is an employee’s job duties, not an employee’s job title, that controls whether a particular overtime exemption applies.
If you have questions about your rights as an employee, believe you may have been misclassified as overtime exempt, or believe you may have been deprived of any other protected rights or employment benefits to which you are entitled by law, please reach out to MSE at info@mselaborlaw.com.
