CVS Sued Over Pandemic Overtime Pay
GoLocalProv News Team
CVS Sued Over Pandemic Overtime Pay
The legal action comes as CVS announced it will be closing pharmacies during lunch hours to address the “burnout crisis” the profession faces.
It marks the latest overtime lawsuit for the pharmacy giant — which recently settled a multi-million dollar overtime lawsuit filed in California last fall.
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About Suit
Vonquet Bowman — a CVS pharmacy technician — filed the suit in Rhode Island District Court on February 14, 2022.
According to the suit, Bowman had been employed by CVS in New Jersey as a pharmacy technician since 2013.
In December 2020, she was assigned to work on the long-term nursing care facility vaccine administration project, as announced — and mandated — by CVS.
Bowman states she was required to travel to long-term nursing care facilities and directly administer the vaccine to residents in “high risk” environments.
The suit notes her normal pay for working hours had been $16.67 an hour — but for the vaccine project, she and other employees were paid a premium rate of $20 an hour for time worked on the project.
In her suit, however, Bowman contends that CVS paid overtime consistent with her non-project rate of pay — and not the premium rate.
Bowman — who in her initial filing said she was bringing the suit on behalf of all employees working on the vaccine project as a collective action — filed a notice of consent on February 15 to join another collective action lawsuit filed by plaintiffs seeking what they allege was underpaid overtime.
When asked for comment on the lawsuit, CVS replied with the following.
“We are committed to ensuring that our employees are compensated appropriately for the hours they work, however we do not comment on pending litigation,” Corporate Communications Director Mike DeAngelis told GoLocal in a statement.
Latest for CVS — and Overtime
In October 2021, CVS agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit that accused the pharmacy of improperly compensating employees for off-the-clock training.
According to the Workplace Rights Law Group:
A federal judge ordered the pharmacy to pay $10,371,346 to the class of pharmacists who brought the lawsuit.
The class, composed of nearly 25,000 pharmacists, alleged that CVS didn’t pay them proper overtime wages.
The complaint, filed by lead plaintiff Sevag Chalin, stated that CVS required pharmacists to complete training modules outside their scheduled shifts.
CVS did not pay the employees for the actual time spent on this training.
Instead, the employer compensated pharmacists only for the time it expected it would take to complete the modules. This is a violation of the California Labor Code.