Wed, 02/03/2021
Boeing has agreed to a $2M non-reversionary settlement to pay 770 current and former Boeing employees in a lawsuit brought pursuant to the Fair Labor Standards Act and Washington State Law. The settlement class comprises current and former Boeing employees who worked as project administrators, planners, and staff analysts in certain grade levels in Washington.
Boeing classified these workers as exempt from the FLSA and Washington law, but nevertheless, paid them for some overtime hours. Pursuant to Boeing’s policies, it paid class members for recorded overtime hours as long as class members worked and recorded at least 2 hours of overtime per shift, and 4 hours of overtime per week. However, even when class members met these criteria, Boeing failed to pay them at one and one-half times their regular rate of pay.
Plaintiffs claimed in the lawsuit that they should have been classified as non-exempt and paid overtime at one and one-half times their regular rate of pay for all hours in excess of 40 in a workweek.
The settlement provides for full backpay for all recorded overtime hours (more than 26,000 recorded overtime hours are at issue) equal to the amount the class members would have been paid had they been treated as FLSA non-exempt, plus an additional amount equal to the backpay as liquidated damages. The settlement will be distributed based on the overtime each class member recorded. As such, the amounts of recovery range from $100 a person to over $19,000, with the average settlement payment being $1,700. These settlement amounts are after payment of attorneys’ fees, settlement administration costs, and service awards.
The parties settled the case while defendant’s motion to dismiss and plaintiffs’ motion for collective action certification were both pending before the court. The parties now jointly seek settlement approval and certification of the settlement class.
Molly Elkin, MSE partner and lead attorney in the lawsuit, stated in the Law360 article covering the settlement that, “[The lawsuit] will provide relief on a class-wide basis in a case where, absent settlement, Boeing would have challenged us every step of the way, on every issue, from certification to its claimed exemption defenses. Getting money in the pockets of these hard-working employees now, as opposed to years from now, is especially important given the global pandemic.”
The case is Cynthia Johnson et al. v. the Boeing Co., case number 2:19-cv-00597, in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.
