A former paralegal at Amazon.com Inc. is suing the company, alleging that the online retail giant misclassified paralegals as exempt employees, The Puget Sound Business Journal reported.
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The lawsuit alleges that Amazon wrongfully misclassified paralegals as exempt employees, meaning that they were not subject to state and federal rules that required the company to pay them overtime for working more than 40 hours a week and to give them scheduled, set times for meal and rest breaks, the Puget Sound Business Journal reported.
The lawsuit was filed in King County Superior Court in Seattle on Aug. 1. Filing the lawsuit was former Amazon employee, Lorraine Colby of Bellevue, who said she worked as a paralegal for Amazon from June 2012 to June 2017.
Amazon is headquartered in Seattle and is looking to open a second headquarters somewhere else in the United States. The company has not responded to the lawsuit in court and a spokeswoman declined to comment to the Puget Sound Business Journal when contacted Aug 16.
“In its never-ending search to save money from its employees, Amazon willfully misclassified its paralegals to save on overtime and avoid the requirements of meal and rest breaks under Washington state law,” the Business Journal quoted the lawsuit as saying.
The lawsuit alleges that Amazon’s legal department was “advised on multiple occasions that these employees were misclassified based on their job duties.”
Amazon onboarding documents told paralegals they were expected to work 50 hours per week to meet the minimum requirements of their job, the lawsuit said, but they were not paid 1.5 times their regular pay for working more than 40 hours per week.
The lawsuit said because paralegals can’t “independently determine their own work product, settle cases, and determine strategy or impact policy or procedure without the authorization of an in-house lawyer” they are not exempt employees.
The lawsuit seeks class-action status to include any paralegals who worked for Amazon in Washington state after August 2015 and were classified as exempt.
