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Law360 (June 23, 2021, 7:32 PM EDT ) An Illinois-based liquor retailer was hit Tuesday with a proposed class action in federal court claiming the company unlawfully failed to accurately calculate overtime wages for workers whose pay included COVID-19-related compensation bumps.
Former employee Victor Sanchez alleged that Gold Standard Enterprises Inc., which does business as Binny's Beverage Depot, promised to pay its workforce more money to work through the pandemic, but then failed to properly factor those wages into its calculations when paying its Illinois workers for their overtime work.
Sanchez says his and other workers' overtime rates should have increased with the pandemic pay bumps because the amounts should have been factored into their regular pay rates. But Binny's didn't factor the extra compensation into its calculations, which means the retailer "substantially underpaid its workforce when they worked overtime while risking their lives," he alleged.
Gold Standard has about 45 locations throughout Illinois and touts itself as the largest wine, spirits, beer and cigar retailer in the Midwest, according to the suit. Sanchez worked at a Binny's located in Chicago suburb Skokie within the last three years, the suit said.
Binny's incentivized its employees to continue working through the COVID-19 pandemic by promising to increase their pay, Sanchez claimed. The company created a policy through which it paid hourly store associates one-and-a-half times more for all hours they worked between March 15 and July 4 last year, an additional $2 per hour between July 5 and Jan. 2 and additional bonuses for salaried managers who continued to work through the public health crisis, his suit said.
"This compensation was well-deserved: these workers were literally risking their lives by potentially contracting Covid-19," Sanchez said.
The additional $2 hourly pay was called "temp bonus pay" and should have been included when Binny's calculated its workers' regular rate of pay, Sanchez claimed. The company's failure to do so violates federal and state wage laws, and violates the U.S. Department of Labor's pandemic guidance that says such incentive payments should be included in regular rate calculations, he claimed.
Sanchez is looking to represent a class consisting of similarly situated Binny's workers who also weren't fully compensated for the work they performed throughout the pandemic. He's asking a court to award him and the proposed class their unpaid compensation, with prejudgment interest, an additional amount of money as liquidated damages, costs and any other relief deemed fit.
Representatives for both sides didn't immediately respond Wednesday to a request for comment.
Sanchez is represented by David Fish, Kimberly Hilton, John Kunze and Seth Matus of The Fish Law Firm PC.
Counsel information for Gold Standard Enterprises couldn't immediately be determined Wednesday.
The case is Victor Sanchez v. Gold Standard Enterprises Inc., case number 1:21-cv-03349, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
--Editing by Ellen Johnson.
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