Did you work as a trainee for Genpact at some point during the past few years? Those who currently hold or previously held the position of trainee any time in the past 3 years up to the present may be eligible to join a collective action case seeking to help with recovery of overtime wages that Genpact failed to pay.

The plaintiffs are using this collective action lawsuit to seek compensation the company owes them for unpaid overtime.

We believe Genpact is violating the federal overtime wage law in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) through the wage practices they are following for employees in trainee positions. All collective action members were wrongly classified as salaried workers who were exempt from overtime. Genpact was in direct violation of the FLSA which states that workers in training for executive, administrative, professional positions cannot be exempt from overtime pay per 29 C.F.R. § 541.705.

Genpact’s Services and Trainee Positions

Genpact is a professional services firm with fifteen offices across the U.S. which, among other things, trains workers for positions at other companies, thereby relieving those companies of the time and expense associated with training. Pursuant to Genpact’s uniform, common, and widespread national policies and practices, trainees are required to complete a rigorous and protracted training program. Specifically, their primary duty was to study, learn, and demonstrate comprehension and mastery of the information and skills necessary to perform the essential job requirements of the position for which they were being trained.

All trainee employees in the collective action lawsuit worked under various job titles, including but not limited to: Human Resources Manager Trainee, Disputes Investigations Specialist Trainee, Operations Manager Trainee, Liability Adjuster Trainee, Management Trainee, Management Trainee Logistics, Payable Accountant, Finance Operations Manager Trainee, GI & Intercompany Accounting Trainee, Master Data Management Trainee, and other interchangeable or related job titles. Trainees worked for Genpact while it trained them for various positions, with the goal of trainees being hired by other entities or businesses after completion of their training.

Lack of Time Tracking and Meal Breaks

Genpact failed to compensate trainees for all hours worked over 40 in each and every workweek, as a result of its uniform, common, and widespread national policy and practice to evade the FLSA and save many millions of dollars in labor costs to the detriment and harm of trainees.

Genpact does not have a practice of time tracking of its trainees because it has no timekeeping system to contemporaneously and accurately track the work hours of trainees. This led to no reporting of overtime hours for trainees who regularly worked for more than a 40-hour work week.

Genpact has a policy of requiring trainees to work between 9:00 am and 6:00 pm, which exceeds a 40-hour workweek, and the company encouraged trainees to work additional hours outside that 9-hour window, as well as through meal time breaks, to further learn their training materials.

Managers and supervisors at Genpact encouraged and even pressured trainees to work as many hours as possible to learn the materials relevant to their position. The trainees were expected to work extra hours to prove their worth as potential future employees.

What We Seek to Recover for Our Affected Employees

We believe that all affected employees working in trainee positions for Genpact throughout the U.S. should have an eligibility to recover all allowable compensation. These damages should include: recovery of overtime wages, prejudgment interest, and any attorney’s fees and costs.

CASE: Lynette Bland v. Genpact, LLC. Case No. 1-22-cv-08687, Filed in the United States District Court, Southern District of New York. Regarding Genpact’s violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) overtime wage laws.

Lynette Bland, a former Genpact LLC “Trainee” working remotely and reporting to the Jacksonville, Florida office, has commenced this nationwide, FLSA collective action lawsuit against Genpact LLC, individually and on behalf of all presently employed and formerly employed trainees of Genpact who worked anytime in the preceding 3 years to the present at any location in the U.S., including working remotely from home.

Our lawsuit alleges that Ms. Bland was hired to be eventually and hypothetically promoted to perform the job of “Disputes Investigations Specialist” and as per her offer letter, she was told that the title was also a “Trainee” for this position. Bland worked from January 2022 until July 2022, along with group of approximately 30 other, remotely hired trainees who were hired in a wave for eventual placement in this Disputes Investigations Specialist position for Chime, a banking company focused on building customers’ credit.

Bland was classified from the very start as a salaried exempt employee, and required to work the minimum, non-discretionary corporate set schedule of 9:00 am until 6:00 pm, a 9-hour day, Monday to Friday, and thus a 45 hour per week workweek, with the opportunity to take a full 1-hour, non-working, uninterrupted meal break. She was told that she was exempt from overtime pay and would not be paid for overtime hours. As a result, Genpact did not have any time clock or time tracking program to account for her work hours, nor did Genpact care whether she worked more than the minimum schedule, or more than 40 hours in any workweek.

We allege that trainees cannot meet the elements of any exemption from an employer’s obligation to pay overtime wages to employees who work more than 40 hours in any work week. Bland also points out that, at most, only one exemption under the FLSA could even be raised by Genpact as a defense to their willful refusal to pay overtime wages: the “administrative exemption.” However, Genpact, who has the burden to prove trainees are exempt under this administrative exemption in this lawsuit, would fail to carry this burden. Thus, Bland and all other trainees who worked for Genpact anytime in the prior 3 years to the date of trial must be compensated and paid their past overtime hours, and at time and one half each trainee’s regular rate of pay.

Our lawsuit also explains that pursuant the U.S. Supreme Court precedent, since Genpact did not track and record the trainees’ work hours, the burden to prove that trainees did not work overtime hours or the precise number of hours worked each week falls upon Genpact. Since the company did not track trainees’ work hours, Genpact must provide this proof, not the trainees.

Bland explains that she routinely logged into the Genpact computer system and database and its customer’s computer system and database upwards of 30 minutes prior to the starting 9:00 am shift time. She also routinely did some work during the so-called 1 hour allotted meal breaks. Given the workweek is a minimum of 9 hours a day and 45 hours per week, this also resulted overtime hours being incurred. Bland even had meetings during this 1-hour meal break. On one occasion, Genpact even admitted and offered to pay her for this time she did not take the full 1 hour, but alas, never did pay her.

Bland also was required to attend a training prior to the 9:00 am start time, as early as 6:30 am, again which was unpaid. Also, she occasionally staying logged in and doing work after 6:00pm.

Whether a trainee was hired under one of 10 or 20 different job titles, such as any sort of management trainee, this case seeks to include all such persons and to recover the unpaid overtime hours worked.

As the FLSA provides, Bland seeks to recover 2 times the wages awarded as liquidated damages for herself and all other trainees, and over a 3-year period. This period extends from October 2019 to the date of trial.

To learn more about this case, click here.

Representing Victims of Unfair FLSA Practices

At Feldman Legal Group, we frequently represent employees as plaintiffs in cases involving FLSA collective actions regarding non-payment of overtime. Some of the employees we represented in past cases, as well as in currently pending cases, worked at companies including Select Rehabilitation, Reliant Rehab, Strada Services, Verizon Connect, Cogent Communications, NinjaOne and NinjaRMM, Fleetcor Technologies, Total Insurance Brokers, Accenture, Managed Labor Solutions, Partsbase, Knight Enterprises, and others in similar FLSA collective actions.

Because of the practices of these companies, we believe that employees did not receive the overtime wages they earned. According to the federal FLSA and state wage laws, any non-exempt employees should receive a premium in wages for hours they work beyond the standard 40-hour work week.

Companies try to work around these overtime payment requirements by misrepresenting the responsibilities or titles of the employees or by outright forcing employees not to report overtime hours. Through our work on this case, we believe that Genpact is purposefully misclassifying trainees and expecting them to regularly work overtime hours.

Genpact’s Violations of the FLSA

Our attorneys at Feldman Legal Group would like to discuss with present and past trainees at Genpact regarding the company’s unfair overtime payment practices. Please contact us to discuss your situation.

Through our investigation, we believe that Genpact did not pay trainees for overtime who:

• Regularly worked a 9-hour workday and 45-hour workweek, at a minimum
• Worked through all or part of the meal break time
• Worked outside of the 9:00 am to 6:00 pm regular hours to meet performance expectations
• Had no method to track their overtime hours.

We are alleging that Genpact frequently expected and encouraged the employees to work hours beyond the 40-hour week without recording these hours as overtime. The company’s misclassification of trainees as exempt, salaried administrative or managerial workers was in direct violation of the law that states trainees cannot be exempt from overtime wages.

Our Investigation of Genpact’s Practices

While investigating the case involving our representative plaintiff, we learned that Genpact trainees were assigned a standard corporate work schedule of Monday through Friday from 9:00 am until 6:00 pm. Trainees routinely worked additional hours studying training the materials and performing other mandatory work activities and training requirements.

Genpact treated and classified the trainees as salaried, exempt employees which violates the law because the workers were in training rather than regular employees.

Since their hours were not recorded, the trainees failed to receive overtime wages for their time spent working through some of the meal breaks permitted, and time spent working beyond the scheduled shift times.

All trainees at Genpact may be working unpaid overtime, which means as many as 1,000 workers are owed wages for overtime they worked. Genpact employs approximately 1,000 trainees at any given point in time working at the company’s locations or working remotely and reporting to Genpact’s 15 offices.

Under this scheme, Genpact willfully and lacking in good faith, violated the FLSA by the following unlawful pay practices: a) willfully instituting and maintaining a deficient, inaccurate time tracking system, and b) willfully misclassifying all trainees as exempt from overtime pay.

Compensation We Seek from Genpact

We are demanding that Genpact to now pay for these extra hours that the employees worked, or that the company knew or should have known that the employees worked, at 1.5 times the regular rate of pay, as required under FLSA.

Get Help from Our Attorneys If You Believe You Weren’t Paid for Overtime

Were you a Genpact “Trainee” and misclassified as a salaried worker? Did you also work during or while on a break, or did you work any hours more than 40 in any week and were not paid overtime wages for this additional time? Then you would have a similar experience to that of Ms. Bland as described in our collective action complaint (see below link) and we want to hear about this work experience.

The outcome of this case can affect your rights under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and any related state wage laws. When an employer “misclassifies” employees as exempt (meaning barred from) being paid for overtime hours, the employer — not the employee — has the legal burden of proof in any lawsuit to prove the exemption and to prove that their actions were lawful and in compliance with the FLSA or state wage laws.

Please contact us for a 10- or 15-minute phone call about your experiences with Genpact and about your beliefs regarding any FLSA violations the company performed. You are under no obligation to join the lawsuit or to work with us after this telephone call.

Please review the collective action complaint for more information about the case.