“Collective Action” Permitted in Citibank Overtime Pay Case

ATTORNEY: MURIELLE STEVEN WALSH
POMERANTZ MONITOR, MARCH/APRIL 2012

A federal judge has conditionally certified a nationwide “collective action” in Pomerantz’s overtime pay case against Citibank, and has authorized us to send a notice to personal bankers who may have been affected by the misconduct we allege in our complaint.
 
We brought this case on behalf of Citi personal bankers (PBs) nationwide who we allege worked “off-the-clock” overtime but were not paid for it. This alleged conduct would violate the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), as well as several state laws, including New York’s.
 
Under the relevant law, we had to make a “modest showing” that there are others who are “similarly situated” to our clients. Here, Citibank has at least 4,000 PBs, of whom we have been able to identify, so far, about two dozen employees who were not paid for overtime work. Citi argued that this was not enough.
 
To bolster our contention that there are a lot more PBs who were “similarly situated” we relied on evidence of dual-edged nationwide policies that created an environment that was ripe for FLSA/overtime violations. We argued that the court could infer from the existence of these policies that there are probably many more PBs who suffered the same fate as our clients. Citi had a nationwide job policy and high sales quotas that effectively forced PBs to work overtime to keep their jobs; but Citi also had a nationwide “no overtime” policy that strongly discouraged the incurring of overtime expenses. The natural result of these conflicting policies was that people worked overtime but were not paid for it, either because they were intimidated into underreporting their time, or in some instances, their managers altered their time records to show no overtime worked. Our plaintiffs testified that this in fact occurred.
 
Because the policies were carried out nationwide, it was reasonable to infer that there are many other PBs who are “similarly situated” to our clients. Citi argued that its policies were “facially lawful,” and that the court could not infer a pattern of FLSA violations simply because it had otherwise lawful policies that had conflicting goals. The Court disagreed.