Two former St. Louis Golf Development employees filed suit against the company, alleging they were not paid overtime for more than 40 hours of work they performed during work weeks.
Michael White, who worked as a mechanic for St. Louis Golf until Dec. 4, 2009, and Richard Davis, who worked as a groundskeeper for the company until Oct. 9, 2009, claim they repeatedly worked more than 40 hours per week, but were not paid at least 1.5 times their regular pay for overtime hours.
"In August or September 2009, plaintiff (Davis) complained to defendant's superintendent that the more hours he worked the less he was being paid and plaintiff consequently refused to 'volunteer' to work additional overtime hours on weekdays," the suit filed Jan. 10 in St. Clair County Circuit Court states.
As a result of Davis' refusal to work the extra hours, St. Louis Golf discharged him, the suit states.
After Davis' discharge, he attempted to collect vacation pay for the 59.96 hours of accrued time he did not take, the complaint says. However, St. Louis Golf refused to pay Davis, he claims.
"The value of plaintiff's accrued, unused vacation at the time of his discharge was $1,152," the suit states.
The plaintiffs allege St. Louis Golf violated the Illinois minimum
wage law, violated the Fair Labor Standards Act, violated the Wage Collection and Payment Act and violated the Whistleblower Act. In addition, they blame St. Louis Golf for retaliatory discharge.
In the seven-count complaint, Davis is seeking reinstatement and back pay. Both plaintiffs are seeking two percent of the amount of the under payments for each month they occurred, plus under payments owed to them, interest, compensatory, liquidated and punitive
damages, costs and attorney's fees.
They will be represented by Ferne P. Wolf of Sowers and Wolf in St. Louis.
St. Clair County Circuit Court case number: 11-L-14.
St. Louis Golf Development workers claim retaliatory discharge
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