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Southern Glazer’s Hit With Wine Sales Consultant Class Action Employment Lawsuit

May 16, 2022 | Filed under Featured Articles | Posted by

A federal employment lawsuit that seeks class action status was filed May 5, 2022 against Southern Glazer’s Wine and Spirits. The lawsuit against the distributor’s primary LLC and its Texas operation was filed in Federal District Court for the Western District of Texas, Austin Division.

The lead plaintiff in the case, Southern Glazer’s employee Savannah Perez, charged that the company violated the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) by allegedly failing to make required overtime payments to her and its other salaried beverage sales consultants who worked more than 40 hours per week.

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The full article text & the complete court complaint file are available to premium subscribers who can go directly to the full version by logging in here:

A Look Inside The Southern Glazer’s  Sales Consultant Duties & Compensation

According to the Perez complaint, sales consultants  were required to: [premium content]. For this, and other duties outlined below, the complaint states that Perez was paid $[redacted] per year.

Goals & Incentives

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Job details

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Potential Misinterpretation:

The complaint filed on behalf of Perez filed states:

 

“42. Plaintiff and Collective Members regularly worked more than forty (40) hours in each workweek. However, Defendant paid Plaintiff and Collective Members a salary for all hours worked after forty (40) hours in each workweek. 

 

“43. In other words, while paying Plaintiff and Collective Members a salary, Defendants did not pay Plaintiff and Collective Members one-and-one-half her regular rate for the hours Plaintiff and Collective Members worked over forty (40) in a workweek.”

 

One interpretation:

 

(a) Sales consultants were not paid at all for overtime (nothing beyond their annual salaries) for work performed more than 40 hours/week?

 

A second interpretation

 

(b) Sales consultants were paid at an hourly rate (based their base salaries) for work performed more than 40 hours/week? But not time-and-a-half?

 

One might conclude that “a” is the correct interpretation, but a different reading might conclude that “b” is the operative meaning.

 

Wine Industry Insight emailed the attorneys who filed the case on behalf of Perez, and asked for a clarification. The attorneys — Drew Herrmann and Allison Herrmann at the Fort Worth firm of Hermann Law — did not reply.

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Court Document –  [premium content]

  • ECF-1- SouthernGlazers-Perez – Complaint – 050422.pdf