Lawsuit Claims Rogue Fitness Failed to Pay Employees for Pre- and Post-Shift Work

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Coulter Ventures, LLC, which does business as Rogue Fitness, and its owners are facing a proposed class and collective action that claims they required employees to perform pre- and post-shift work, but only paid for work done during scheduled shifts.

Rogue Fitness, the case states, required its warehouse, manufacturing and customer service employees to clock in a half hour before their respective shifts to obtain the day’s assignments and prepare their workstations and equipment. The defendants required workers to be ready to start work promptly when their shifts began, the suit explains, and would mark employees late if they were not prepared – even if they had already clocked in.

Similarly, the complaint claims that Rogue Fitness frequently required employees to work past the end of their scheduled shifts to complete all assigned tasks. The lawsuit alleges that Rogue Fitness employees were still on the clock while performing post-shift work and that these duties often pushed their total hours worked to more than 40 per week. The defendants, however, still failed to pay employees overtime wages or straight-time pay for work done before and after their shifts, according to the case.

Although Rogue Fitness employees were under company control and performed tasks “integral and indispensable to their principal activity” outside of their shifts, the case claims the defendant excluded this time from workers’ compensable hours. From the lawsuit:

“Named Plaintiff and Putative Plaintiffs were clocked into Defendants’ time clocking system when all their work was being performed; however, Defendants willfully reduced the time logged and only paid them for the hours scheduled each day regardless of how much work was performed pre and post scheduled shift.”

In addition, the lawsuit claims that Rogue Fitness only paid event staff a flat per-diem amount when working offsite, regardless of the number of hours worked.

By failing to compensate employees for all time worked and paying a flat per-diem regardless of the number of hours worked, the complaint contends that Rogue Fitness violated both the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and the Ohio Wage Act.

The lawsuit looks to represent all employees who worked in the defendants’ warehouse, customer service or manufacturing divisions over the last three years and were only paid for time worked during their scheduled shifts despite being clocked in for more than seven minutes before or after their shifts. The suit seeks compensatory damages equal to the difference between overtime payments required under the FLSA and Ohio Wage Act and the amount of compensation actually paid by Rogue Fitness.