Judge Orders Wawa to Pay $1.4M to Settle Overtime Lawsuit

WAWA, Pa. — Wawa Inc. is in line to pay $1.4 million to settle a lawsuit over overtime wages involving more than 300 assistant managers.

On July 31, U.S. District Judge Peter Sheridan, sitting in New Jersey, approved a deal that requires Wawa and its parent company, Wild Goose Holdings, to pay more than $1.4 million to 333 assistant managers for improperly classifying them as overtime-exempt employees, according to NJ.com.

Filed in January 2017, members of a federal class action suit alleged they worked for the convenience store operators more than 40 hours a week without receiving overtime pay as required by federal law.

"As a retailer operating over 720 stores throughout the country, [Wawa] knew or recklessly disregarded the fact that the [Fair Labor Standards Act] required it to pay employees performing non-exempt duties an overtime premium for hours worked in excess of 40 per week," attorneys stated in the lawsuit.

The managers should not have been exempt from overtime laws because their duties involved manual labor, customer service and other non-exempt tasks, according to court documents.

Each of the workers in the suit from Wawa c-stores in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Florida and Delaware will receive an average of $86.74 for each week they worked, according to the order.

The overtime ruling follows a recent judicial ruling granting class status to more than 1,000 former employees who say they were forced to trade the Wawa stock in their retirement plan at an unfair price, as Convenience Store News previously reported.

Pennsylvania-based Wawa operates more than 840 c-stores in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Florida and Washington, D.C. Wawa ranks No. 15 on the 2019 Convenience Store News Top 100 list.