July 26, 2017
For the second time in 2017, a lawsuit has been filed against Wawa by a former employee claiming unfair overtime compensation practices at the convenience store chain.
A former Wawa general manager, Vincent Papp, is seeking an award for unpaid wages, NJ.com reported. He worked in four different Wawa locations throughout New Jersey.
In the suit, Papp claims that after being hired as a trainee for a general manager position at Wawa in March 2015, a role which he worked through December 2015, his job entailed little to no managerial duties.
He was instead assigned to work more common tasks typically assigned to non-manager employees, such as making sandwiches and working the cash register, according to the lawsuit.
However, his title required him to work at least 10 hours a day, five days a week, the class-action suit claims. Papp says he often ended up working more than 60 hours a week.
Papp claims that this training process and hour requirement is indicative of the Wawa brand at large throughout its locations across six states. The suit seeks awards for unpaid wages and, on a larger scale, an injunction that could stop Wawa from continuing these practices in the future.
In January, Wawa was in a similar position as four former employees filed a proposed class-action lawsuit claiming they were denied overtime pay, the Courier-Post reported at the time.
Much like Papp, the employees who filed the January lawsuit claimed that the store’s pay practices for assistant general managers violated labor laws in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland.
Though convenience store operators consider general managers to be exempt from overtime pay, both lawsuits note that duties for assistant general managers are largely manual in nature. The January lawsuit said that Wawa doesn’t budget enough for lower-level workers to receive overtime pay, therefore allocating lower-level tasks to higher-up employees whose managerial status exempts them from being paid extra.
Wawa has not yet commented on the new lawsuit.
