Irony alert: Healthcare.gov staffers sue for FLSA violations
Healthcare reform headaches just keep piling up for the feds.
The latest: Nine workers at a customer service call center for healthcare reform’s healthcare.gov site have filed a wage-and-hour lawsuit against Maximus, the Virginia company that runs the website.
The employees claim that they worked 50- or 60-hour weeks — starting work days at 5 a.m. and not finishing until 3 or 5 p.m. — and weren’t paid overtime.
They added that meetings were often scheduled after their shifts, forcing them to stay even longer. And, in the lead-up to the launch of the site, the plaintiffs said some worked as many as 24 hours on the weekend before Christmas to get the site up and running.
The nine employees — who worked as front-line managers and trainers — made about $38,000 to $42,500 a year, according to the Washington Post.
But they also claim that they didn’t meet some of the requirements for being classified as exempt. The workers say they:
- were strongly controlled by Maximus policy and by their managers
- didn’t exercise independent judgment or discretion, and
- performed duties that weren’t related to the Maximus’ business operations or policies.
The workers added that it’s tough to say how much money they’re actually owed because they weren’t permitted to accurately fill out time cards when they were classified as exempt.
That said, the suit, filed in a district court in Idaho, seeks at least $5 million in damages and compensation for the potentially hundreds of similar employees who were also allegedly misclassified.
Another suit being settled
This isn’t the first wage-and-hour lawsuit filed against Maximus recently.
A call center employee in Texas filed a separate suit last year also claiming that the firm misclassified him as exempt and failed to pay him overtime.
That case is in the process of being settled.
As for the current case, a Maximus spokesperson told Businessweek that the firm hasn’t received the official complaint yet but ”we are already investigating the matter. Our company policy is to comply with all applicable labor laws.”
We’ll let you know how the case shakes out.
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