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An Amazon employee in Colorado accuses the company of not paying out incentives correctly on busy days during the holidays.
DENVER — An Amazon employee claims in a lawsuit the company failed to pay him the correct amount for overtime during the holidays.
The lawsuit claims Amazon did not correctly pay out incentives on busy days during the holidays, while the company contends it didn’t violate Colorado state law.
The federal 10th Circuit Court of Appeals is asking the Colorado Supreme Court to weigh in.
9NEWS legal analyst Whitney Traylor said the case comes down to how overtime hours were calculated.
“Essentially an Amazon worker or Amazon workers [said], ‘We’re suing Amazon based on the way they were calculating their overtime pay,'” Traylor said. “So overtime in Colorado is 1.5 times your regular rate of pay. But the question is, what is the regular rate of pay?”
He said when Amazon was calculating what the regular rate of pay was, the company wasn’t counting hours worked on “incentive-pay holiday.”
“So if you worked on those holidays, that time didn’t get added to your regular rate to determine if you qualified for overtime,” Traylor said.
He said the case is specific to Colorado because it pertains to the Colorado Wage Act passed by the state legislature.
“What the federal court is saying is, ‘This is an issue that hasn’t been resolved in Colorado,'” Traylor said. “So they’re asking the Colorado Supreme Court to look at this specific Colorado law.”
He said the case could impact how companies handle payment policies going forward.
“It will affect workers going forward, because if the court says, ‘Hey, you have to include this time when you’re calculating people’s rate of pay,’ well then that means employers may decide not to offer certain types of incentive,” Traylor said.
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