Workers recover unpaid overtime

ALBANY, N.Y. — Forty-one project coordinators will share $1.85 million in back pay after their employer agreed it had wrongly classified them as exempt from overtime.

The coordinators were paid a flat salary and regularly worked 50 hours or more a week. The company said the job title made them managers under federal and state wage law. The workers said they managed no one.

At issue were up to three years of unpaid overtime for each worker, and a broader question: whether a title alone can take a job outside overtime rules.

Marvessa Law set the coordinators' daily duties against the legal tests for the exemption. The firm gathered calendar entries, email timestamps and badge records to rebuild the hours the coordinators actually worked, week by week.

The employer paid $1.85 million in back wages and reclassified the position as overtime-eligible going forward. A federal judge approved the settlement.

Individual payments varied with how long each coordinator had held the job. Attorneys' fees, approved by the court, came out of the total.

Wage lawyers note that overtime eligibility depends on the work people do, not what their job is called. Workers who keep their own record of hours are often in a stronger position if a dispute arises.