Two employees at Isle Casino in Cape Girardeau, Missouri filed a class-action lawsuit in U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Missouri, alleging the casino failed to properly pay hourly employees under state and federal law. Maria L. Smith and Casandra J. Henderson allege they received less than minimum wage due to the casino’s “time clock rounding policy,” which, “over a period of time, results in the failure to compensate its employees properly for all time worked, including overtime hours.”
The plaintiffs’ attorney, Ryan McClelland, explained the casino “rounds” employees’ clock-in and clock-out times to the nearest quarter hour “so that employees were not paid for all of the time they worked.”
The lawsuit also alleges the casino “failed to properly inform” employees about required “tip credit provisions” and “made improper deductions from its employees’ paychecks for gaming license fees and other deductions.” The casino’s actions “reduced its employees’ compensation below the required minimum wage and, in some situations, overtime rate,” and the violations were “willful” on the part of the casino, according to the lawsuit.
Smith and Henderson are the only plaintiffs named in the lawsuit, but it was filed as a “class action” on behalf of “other similarly situated” current and former employees of Isle Casino. “We estimate that hundreds of employees will be affected by the claims asserted in this lawsuit,” McClelland said. He stated he has brought similar actions against casinos in Kansas City, Boonville, Caruthersville and St. Louis.
According to the lawsuit, Smith was employed as a cage cashier, cage main banker and cage dual rate supervisor from August 2015 through April 2018. Henderson was a table games dealer from October 2012 through December 2017. Both were hourly, nonexempt employees.
Isle Casino General Manager Lyle Randolph said, “It is the company’s policy not to comment on ongoing litigation.”
