Santa Clara, CA: Ford Motor Company is facing an unpaid wages and overtime class action lawsuit filed by a call center employee in Florida who alleges the company is violating the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), by misclassifying her and others similarly situated as being exempt from overtime pay.
Filed by Alice Cortes, who worked as a “zone manager” in a Florida call center run by Ford and Percepta LLC, the company that provides customer service call centers, the suit states that the defendants regularly required her and others to work overtime to meet call volume quotas.
Cortes claims in the suit that she worked Ford and Percepta from October 2005 to February 2016 as a full-time employee known as a “zone manager”. As such, she received a salary. However, the defendants allegedly improperly classified her as exempt from overtime requirements under the FLSA.
Cortes alleges she worked on average about 50 hours each week but wasn’t paid appropriately for all her overtime hours. She further claims that she is not alone, as numerous other zone managers were also misclassified in the same way and worked in excess of 40 hours per week. The suit asserts the defendants failed to keep accurate time records.
Cortes seeks to represent a collective class comprised of all current, former and future zone managers who worked for Percepta and Ford, and who were paid a salary and worked more than 40 hours a week in at last one work week during the past three years.
Cortes is represented by Gregory A. Owens and Miguel Bouzas of Bouzas Owens PA. The case is Alice Cortes v. Percepta LLC, et al., case number 6:17-cv-00758, in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida.
