Employees sue Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance, alleging wage and hour violations
Three financial representatives of Northwestern Mutual Life have filed a wage and hour lawsuit against the company for failing to pay overtime. They hope to make the case a class action suit, alleging widespread abuse amounting to more than $200 million dollars in unpaid wages. The workers allege that Northwestern has avoided state wage and hour laws and restrictions by improperly classifying the employees as independent contractors. Many companies (with FedEx being an egregious example) have earned billions of dollars in illicit profit through the suspect classification of employees as "independent", even though their terms of employment are tightly controlled in a manner rendering the "employees" under the law.