Zale faces possible class action for time shaving

San Diego--Lawyers in California are seeking to bring a class action lawsuit against Zale Corp. on behalf of nearly 20,000 employees who allegedly were cheated out of overtime pay because they had minutes “shaved” off their timecards.

Originally filed in July 2013, the case began with a woman named Naomi Tapia, who worked as a non-exempt employee (an employee who must be compensated for overtime; generally, an hourly employee) at the Zales store at Imperial Valley Mall in southern California from May 2012 until she was fired six months later, in November.

The lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, claims that Tapia was not compensated for all the overtime hours she worked due to the retailer’s uniform “time shaving” policy.

Time shaving is the practice of rounding off the number of hours put in by an employee. Tapia’s time records for Oct. 14, 2012 are included in the suit as Exhibit B, and they show that she worked 9 hours and 3 minutes that day but was paid only for 1 hour of overtime, rather than 1 hour and 3 minutes.

The suit also alleges that when Tapia was paid overtime, her wage was not calculated properly because it did not factor in commissions to her regular rate of pay, which subsequently is used to determine an employee’s overtime rate. Court papers state that under federal law, commission and all “value received via an employment relationship” must be factored into the calculation of the regular rate of pay. 

It also claims she was not provided accurate, itemized wage statements and was recorded as taking full 30-minute lunches even when she didn’t do so.

According to the lawsuit, Zale’s practices violated both the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and labor laws in California.

On Wednesday, Tapia’s attorneys filed a motion in California federal court to have her claims certified as a class on behalf of all those who worked as non-exempt employees of Zale Corp. in California between July 3, 2009 and the time of the trial, and for those who worked for Zale anywhere else in the United States between July 3, 2010 and the time of the trial, court papers show.

That adds up to more than 19,000 employees.

A spokesman for Signet Jewelers Ltd., which acquired Zale in a $1.4 billion deal last year, said the