Two former loan officers lodged a lawsuit against Rocket Mortgage in mid-July accusing the home lending giant of failing to pay overtime.
The plaintiffs are asking the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan Southern Division to certify this case as a class action. If the request gets approved, this will be at least the
Per the suit filed on Aug. 10, former staffers Brittany Roseboro and John Glover claim the company made employees attend pre-shift meetings before permitting them to clock in. Additionally, Rocket required employees to take mandatory training that they were not compensated for and to boot up and log in to their work computers prior to clocking in, the suit said.
By doing so, Rocket "willfully" violated the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Michigan Workforce Opportunity Wage Act (WOWA), plaintiffs claim. The lawsuit was first reported by Law360.
Rocket Mortgage disputed the claims made by the lawsuit.
"The company will vigorously defend the reputation we have built by doing the right thing for our team members and we are confident we will be vindicated from the false allegations once the facts of the case are presented," a company spokeswoman said in a written statement.
Per documents filed by the plaintiffs, pre-shift meetings at the company started approximately 15 minutes before the formal shift start time and "often extended past the formal shift start time, so that employees could not clock in until after the formal shift start time."
These meetings often took place away from employees' workstations, so that they could not boot-up their computer systems until after the meeting.
Documents filed by the former employees claim that Rocket deliberately "suffered or permitted" the collective members to perform labor without payment of overtime compensation at a rate of not less than one-and-one-half times their regular hourly rate of pay for hours worked in excess of forty in a week as required by federal law.
If the class action is certified "thousands of individuals" meet the legal threshold to join the class action. The suit seeks a trial by jury and for the court to award plaintiffs and "the collective and class action members the full amount of damages and liquidated damages available by law."
A similar suit was filed in January in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona. Ten Arizona and Michigan-based ex-employees, who worked at Rocket between last February and October, claim the megalender failed to pay them overtime.
"Defendant knew that – or acted with reckless disregard as to whether – their refusal or failure to properly compensate Plaintiffs and the Collective Members over the course of their employment would violate federal law, and Defendant was aware of the FLSA overtime requirements," wrote attorney James Weiler on behalf of the plaintiffs.
Rocket also disputed these claims, calling them baseless. The suit is currently pending.
