Colorado Casino Operators Hit with Lawsuit Over Alleged Shaving of Employee Work Hours

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The entities that operate Colorado’s Johnny Z’s Casino, Z Casino and the Grand Z Casino Hotel face a proposed collective and class action lawsuit over their alleged practice of paying hourly employees based on a rounded number of work hours rather than the actual number of hours worked. The plaintiff claims the practice has deprived some of the defendants’ employees of rightful regular and overtime wages. 

The suit says the defendants have over the last three years employed “hundreds, if not thousands” of individuals who were required to keep track of their work hours via an electronic time-keeping system and trained to be accustomed to moving between the three casinos over the course of a normal workweek. The plaintiff, who worked as a table games dealer from May 2017 through January 2019, claims that rather than pay employees based on the number of hours actually worked, the defendants instead round work hours down to the nearest quarter-hour in seven-minute increments. From the complaint:

“For example, were an employee to clock in at 11:53 for a shift scheduled to begin at 12:00, the time keeping system would report the employee’s start time as 12:00 and pay the employee accordingly – denying the employee pay for the first 7 minutes the employee was clocked in and working. Were that same employee then to clock out at 6:07, the time keeping system would report the employee’s end time as 6:00 – denying the employee pay (again) for the last seven minutes that he or she was on the clock and working.”

Time-shaving claims notwithstanding, the case goes on to allege the defendants routinely required hourly employees to punch in prior to their scheduled shift start times in order to be at their workstations right when their shifts were set to begin. The plaintiff claims she and similarly situated employees were typically required to clock in roughly five to seven minutes before their scheduled shift start times yet would not be paid for these few minutes of extra work.