Fred Meyer Assistant Store Managers Owed Unpaid Overtime Wages, Lawsuit Alleges

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The Kroger Company and Fred Meyer Stores, Inc. face a proposed collective action that claims Fred Meyer assistant store managers (ASMs) have not been paid proper overtime wages as required under federal law.

According to the lawsuit, the workers are misclassified as exempt from receiving overtime wages despite being required to perform essentially the same duties as non-exempt hourly employees. 

“Although Defendants consider their ASMs to be ‘managers,’ ASMs are not responsible for true management functions,” the complaint states, alleging that the workers are owed time-and-a-half overtime pay for every hour they worked above 40 each week.

The case says that Kroger, through its subsidiary Fred Meyer Stores, operates over 130 Fred Meyer “hypermarkets” across Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. Per the suit, the defendants established labor budgets to cover the cost of operating each store yet did not provide sufficient funds in the budgets to cover the necessary non-exempt tasks.

The lawsuit claims the defendants “knew or recklessly disregarded” the fact that their underfunding of store budgets would cause assistant store managers to be required to work more than 40 hours per week in order to perform the required tasks, which allowed the defendants to avoid paying non-exempt, store-level employees additional wages to perform such duties.

Although assistant store managers were considered “managers” and exempted from receiving overtime pay, their primary duties, according to the case, were essentially the same as those performed by non-exempt employees and included serving customers, operating the cash register, stocking shelves, unloading trucks, moving merchandise, counting inventory and cleaning the store. This work required “little skill and no capital investment,” the suit says, nor did it require managerial responsibilities or the exercising of independent judgment and discretion. Per the lawsuit, assistant store managers worked at least 50, and often more, hours per week without receiving time-and-a-half overtime pay.

The plaintiff, who worked as an assistant store manager at a Portland, Oregon Fred Meyer store between January 2017 and December 2019, says he usually put in 55 to 60 or more hours per week yet never received proper overtime wages.

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