Facts

Josephina Valdez worked as a Pharma/Biotech/Med, also referred to as a Consultant Case Manager for Pro Unlimited Inc. working on assignment at Genentech USA Inc. from September 2018 to November 2018. Pro Unlimited is a Contingent Workforce Manager that helps companies by providing and managing contingent workers. Genentech is a biotechnology company that discovers, develops, manufactures and commercializes medicines for treating various medical conditions. Valdez's typical duties consisted of taking and making phone calls, and taking messages from patients, doctors' offices, insurance companies. She also performed other customer service duties such as responding to questions regarding insurance issues and making conference calls regarding co-payment programs. Every day, Valdez was required to long-in and punch into two different systems: Finesse, a phone system that tracks attendance when logged in; and Wand, a system that included a timecard function, where her time would be manually inputted. She filed a PAGA and class action lawsuit against Pro Unlimited and Genentech, seeking to represent persons who were or had been employed by them working as Pharma/Biotech/Med, Consultant Case Manager or those with similar duties or job titles and as non-exempt hourly employees in California beginning February 28, 2015.

PLAINTIFFS' CONTENTIONS: Plaintiffs contended that defendants failed to pay all regular and overtime wages, failed to provide legally-required meal and rest periods, failed to timely pay wages due at termination, failed to provide timely and accurate wage statements, violated the Private Attorneys General Act, and engaged in unfair competition. For example, because she was required to log into Finesse, she was not paid for time spent booting up her computer, and it would appear that she began her shift later than when she actually arrived because of the time it took to log in. If Valdez was stuck on a call, she would have to keep working until the call ended and though she would have worked overtime, which was registered onto Finesse, Valdez was not allowed to record the actual time she stopped working because any type of overtime entered on her time sheet required pre-approval, which was not feasible or realistic in those types of situations where one would have to anticipate an unexpected situation. Moreover, she was unable to take the required mandatory meal break or rest breaks as she was constantly on the phone with patients, doctors or insurance companies and could not interrupt those calls to do so. Because of business pressure and workload, meals were often late or missed. This also happened with the mandatory rest breaks. Also, because she was required to log into two systems, Valdez and the others would be pressured by defendants to enter the scheduled break times rather than the actual times.

DEFENDANTS' CONTENTIONS: Defendants denied each and every allegation and asserted that they were not liable for claims asserted by plaintiff or the class members.

Result

The case settled for $438,000.