Isle Casino Cape Girardeau one of several casinos named in class-action lawsuit over wages

Isle Casino Cape Girardeau has been named in a class-action lawsuit filed Monday alleging the casino has failed to properly pay its hourly employees under state and federal wage laws.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of two former employees, was filed in U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Missouri.

The suit alleges the two named employees, Maria L. Smith and Casandra J. Henderson, received less than minimum wage rate due to the casino’s “time clock rounding policy,” which, according to the suit, “results, over a period of time, in the failure to compensate its employees properly for all time worked, including overtime hours.”

The attorney representing Smith and Henderson, Ryan McClelland of Liberty, Missouri, said in an email to the Southeast Missourian 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.”

In addition, the lawsuit alleges the casino “failed to properly inform” employees of required “tip credit provisions” and “made improper deductions from its employees’ paychecks for gaming license fees and other deductions.” According to the lawsuit, 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.

Although Smith and Henderson are the only plaintiffs named in the lawsuit, it was filed as a “class action” on behalf of “other similarly situated” current and former employees of Isle Casino.

According to the lawsuit, Smith was employed at the casino from August 2015 through April 2018 as a cage cashier, cage main banker and cage dual rate supervisor. Henderson was a table games dealer there from October 2012 through December 2017. Both were hourly, nonexempt employees.

The lawsuit alleges Smith, Henderson “and all similarly situated employees” are “victims of uniform compensation policies” at the casino and are “entitled to damages equal to the mandated minimum wage and overtime premium pay” along with other damages.

“We estimate that hundreds of employees will be affected by the claims asserted in this lawsuit,” McClelland said, adding he has brought similar actions against casinos in Kansas City, Boonville, Caruthersville and St. Louis.

Isle Casino general manager Lyle Randolph said “it is the company’s policy not to comment on ongoing litigation.”

jwolz@semissourian.com

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