Another Overtime Complaint filed against Dr. Pepper

Burlington, MAA Keurig Dr Pepper employee filed a class action lawsuit last month in Massachusetts federal court claiming the company misclassified employees in Pennsylvania and California as exempt from overtime wages. The lawsuit claims the company violated the Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act (PMWA) and California law by not paying overtime compensation. This is the third overtime lawsuit against the beverage company since 2019. As well, overtime violations and wage statement violations go hand-in-hand.

This latest complaint was filed by Francisco Verdin, a Keurig Dr Pepper (KDP) warehouse supervisor for two years, and now a forklift operator. Verdin says he was paid his yearly salary despite consistently working more than 40 hours per week – sometimes 60 hours. As well, Verdin claims the beverage company failed to pay wages in a timely fashion, meaning the company would be on the hook for waiting time penalties, which is charged if record keeping laws are violated. In this case, KDP allegedly violated unfair competition law by not providing accurate wages for the hours worked.

While the Pennsylvania class claims only that the PMWA was violated when the workers were not given "1.5 times their regular rates of pay for work performed in excess of 40 in a workweek," the California class makes four unpaid overtime claims. It alleges KDP also:

• Failed to pay the wages.
• Failed to pay the wages in a timely fashion — hence “waiting time penalties".
• Violated record keeping laws by incorrectly labeling the employees as overtime-exempt.
• Violated unfair competition law by not providing accurate wages for the hours worked.

The case is Francisco Verdin v. Keurig Dr Pepper Inc., case number 1:23-cv-10425, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

Other Dr Pepper Overtime Complaints

The class action is similar to another overtime complaint filed in April 2022 by a former KDP and Dr. Pepper/Seven Up employee. Plaintiff Edwin Derick Morales Acevedo, who was employed as a Truck Checker and Warehouse Supervisor at the Queens, NY facility from November 2020 to February 2022, claims he and other workers were not paid proper overtime wages. He claims that beverage companies’ policy requires warehouse employees to put in more than 40 hours per week without paying them time-and-a-half overtime wages in accordance with state and federal labor laws.

Overtime violations and wage statement violations go hand-in-hand. According to the class action, KDP “willfully disregarded and purposefully evaded” the federal Fair Labor Standards Act’s recordkeeping requirements in order to disguise the number of hours employees actually worked and thus avoid properly paying them for that time…Defendants engaged in their unlawful conduct pursuant to a corporate policy of minimizing labor costs and denying employees compensation by knowingly violating the FLSA and [New York Labor Law], reported classaction.org.

Acevedo argues that:

• He was paid the same weekly wages, even when he was forced to stay later than scheduled or worked an extra day.
• He was denied an earned bonus payment.
• He wasn’t compensated for accrued time off at the time of his termination.
• He wasn’t provided accurate wage statements and notice of the individual’s pay rate and regular payday.

Acevedo claims his wage statements were missing much of the required information, including the dates covered by that pay period; employee’s name; employer’s name, address and phone number; rate or rates of pay and the basis on which they’re paid; gross wages; deductions; allowances claimed as part of the minimum wage; net wages; overtime rates; and the number of regular and overtime hours worked.

This case is Acevedo v. Keurig Dr Pepper, Inc. et al.

And the third wage and hour lawsuit was brought against a subsidiary of Keurig-Dr. Pepper - American Bottling Company—by employee Juan M. Guzman-Lopez in 2019. Guzman-Lopez worked in California as a merchandiser between November 2017 and September 2018. He drove to stores in Los Angeles County to set up promotional signs and stock merchandise. Because Guzman-Lopez was a non-exempt employee, and paid hourly, he was covered by California labor laws and the state’s IWC wage orders.

According to his complaint, because of “demanding deadlines,” employees “were required to perform work as ordered by Defendants for more than five hours during a shift without receiving a duty-free, uninterrupted meal break and/or more than ten hours in a shift without received a second meal break.” As well, Class Actions Reporter noted the Guzman-Lopez complaint states the companies required employees “to work off-the-clock without paying for all the time they were under Defendants’ control performing pre-shift and post-shift duties…” Among other things, they had to meet the companies’ “excessive expectation that its employees complete their assigned routes within predetermined timeframe[s] at all cost[s].”

Because Guzman-Lopez and other employees were not paid overtime, their “wage statements were not accurate or properly itemized. Rather, the companies apparently falsified their time records, adding meal breaks that never took place. So, KDP may find that it doesn’t pay to misclassify employees when it gets hit with waiting time penalties, over and above unpaid overtime compensation.