TEXARKANA, Ark. - A lawsuit filed Tuesday in a Texarkana federal court accuses the owner of Sav-A-Lot grocery stores of failing to pay hourly workers time-and-a-half for hours worked in excess of 40 per week.
The complaint was filed on behalf of Brittany Williams, a Miller County resident and former hourly employee of a Sav-A-Lot in Texarkana, Ark. The lawsuit was filed by North Little Rock lawyers Chris Burks and Brandon Haubert in the Texarkana Division of the Western District of Arkansas. The complaint seeks certification as a collective and class action. That means that in addition to Williams, the suit seeks a judgment on behalf of other hourly Sav-A-Lot employees with claims similar to Williams'.
The suit accuses SEP Inc., an operating company for Sav-A-Lot, of improperly rounding employees' hours in favor of the employer and in violation of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and of the Arkansas Minimum Wage Act.
"Defendant SEP, Inc., operates multiple grocery store facilities across the region, including a store in Texarkana, Ark., and has one corporate United States headquarters that centralizes all pay, time, and human resource policies so that they are the same across its facilities," the complaint states.
A representative of SEP could not be immediately reached Wednesday for comment. Court records show that the company has not yet been served with a copy of the complaint.
The suit seeks to represent all hourly Sav-A-Lot employees who was paid on an hourly basis for the three years prior to the filing of the complaint.
The suit seeks to recover the money the employees allegedly should have been paid for overtime, court costs and attorney fees. The complaint asks for a judgment declaring that SEP violated the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Arkansas Minimum Wage Act.
The case is currently pending before U.S. District Judge Susan Hickey. No hearings are currently scheduled.