AllianceRx Owes Call Center Workers for Pre-, Post-Shift Work, Lawsuit Alleges

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AllianceRx and a staffing agency have failed to pay call center employees for work performed before clocking in and after clocking out, according to a proposed collective and class action.

The lawsuit alleges defendants Walgreens Specialty Pharmacy, LLC (which does business as AllianceRx Walgreens Prime) and Healthcare Support Staffing, Inc. have violated both the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and Arizona Wage Act by failing to pay call center representatives (CCRs) for time spent logging into and out of their computers, telephones and programs required for their jobs, which the suit says on many occasions added up to over half an hour of unpaid work per day.

“In reckless disregard of the FLSA and Arizona wage and hour laws, Defendants adopted and then adhered to its policy, plan, or practice of employing Plaintiff, and all other current and/or former CCRs, to perform pre-shift and post-shift compensable work off-the-clock,” the complaint alleges. “This illegal policy, plan, or practice caused incorrect payments for all straight time and overtime performed by Plaintiff, and all other current and/or former CCRs, in violation of the FLSA and Arizona wage and hour laws.”

AllianceRx is a joint venture between Walgreens and pharmacy benefit manager Prime Therapeutics to provide pharmacy services to customers, the lawsuit relays. According to the case, AllianceRx operates customer service call centers in Tempe, Arizona; Dallas, Texas; Canton, Michigan; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania that Healthcare Support Staffing staffs with customer service representatives.

The plaintiff claims to have been hired by Healthcare Support Staffing for a position at AllianceRx’s Tempe location in September 2020 but worked remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In her position as a call center representative, the plaintiff was primarily responsible for “answering calls from Defendant Alliance Rx’s customers regarding their prescriptions, helping clients with their online profiles, verifying patient information, performing data entry, and resolving other customer issues,” the case relays.

Before the plaintiff could begin answering calls each day, she was required to turn on her computer and log in to various programs, servers and applications and the defendants’ phone system prior to her scheduled start time, the complaint explains. The suit alleges, however, that the plaintiff was not permitted to clock in before the start of her shift and was therefore not compensated for this pre-shift login process, which typically took about 30 minutes and was “integral and indispensable” to the performance of the plaintiff’s job and the defendants’ business, according to the filing.

The lawsuit alleges the plaintiff and other call center workers were required to perform a similar process to log out after the end of each scheduled shift, which regularly took three to five minutes and also went uncompensated.

Per the suit, the defendants should have known they were required to pay workers for their off-the-clock pre- and post-shift work yet refused to do so. The case claims the employees are owed both unpaid minimum and overtime wages.

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