Meal Break Deduction Policy. Under this policy the defendants' timekeeping system automatically deducted 30 minutes of pay daily for meal breaks, without ensuring that the employees actually received a break.

Unpaid Pre- and Post-schedule Work Policy. Under this policy the defendants prohibited employees from recording time worked outside of their scheduled shifts.

Unpaid Training Policy. Under this policy the defendants did not pay employees for time spent at allegedly compensable training sessions.

Dismissed the plaintiffs' FLSA claims with prejudice on the grounds that plaintiffs did not plausibly allege:

Declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the Pennsylvania state law claims, dismissing those claims without prejudice.

The defendants did not compensate them for hours worked in excess of 40 per week, including compensable time during meal breaks, at training programs and outside of their scheduled shifts.

Their claims for gap time are within the scope of the FLSA.

Affirmed the district court's dismissal of the plaintiffs' FLSA overtime claims.

Held that plaintiffs had no FLSA cause of action for "pure" gap time wages.

Declined to address whether the plaintiffs' gap time claims were for "overtime gap time" because the plaintiffs did not plausibly allege that they worked overtime in any given week.

To recover overtime compensation under the FLSA, an employee must show:

(Davis v. Food Lion, 792 F.2d 1274, 1276 (4th Cir. 1986) citing Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co., 328 U.S. 680, 687 (1946)).

The detail necessary to plead an FLSA overtime claim is a more difficult question and courts have adopted different approaches, for example:

The pleading analysis is context-specific and requires courts to draw on judicial experience and common sense (Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009)).

It agrees with the middle-ground approach taken by the Second Circuit in Lundy v. Catholic Health System of Long Island Inc., in which the court held that to state a plausible FLSA overtime claim, a plaintiff must sufficiently allege 40 hours of work in a given workweek and some uncompensated time in excess of the 40 hours (711 F.3d 106 (2d Cir. 2013)).

It disagrees with the plaintiffs' argument that, because they allege they "typically" worked full time shifts of between 32 and 40 hours per week and "frequently" worked extra time, it is plausible that at least some of their uncompensated work was performed during weeks when their total work time was more than 40 hours.

None of the named plaintiffs has alleged a single workweek in which he worked at least 40 hours and also worked uncompensated time in excess of 40 hours. Of the plaintiffs who allege that they typically worked at least 40 hours per week, in addition to extra hours frequently worked during meal breaks or outside of their scheduled shifts, none indicates that he, in fact, worked extra hours during a typical 40-hour workweek. Their allegations are therefore insufficient, as other courts have held, for example:

A plaintiff need not identify the exact dates and times that he worked overtime. For example, a plaintiff's claim that he "typically" worked 40 hours per week, worked extra hours during such a 40-hour week, and was not compensated for extra hours beyond the 40 hours he worked during one or more of those 40-hour weeks, is enough. Because the plaintiffs made no such allegation, the district court did not err in dismissing their claims for overtime under the FLSA.

Courts widely agree that there is no cause of action under the FLSA for "pure" gap time wages (Nakahata, 723 F.3d at 201). "Gap time" is non-overtime hours an employee works but for which he is not compensated. For example, if an employee is normally scheduled to work 37.5 hours, and works 39, but receives the same compensation as weeks in which he works 37.5 hours, he might claim 1.5 hours of straight-time pay for this "gap time." However, if the employee's hourly rate is high enough that he still averages more than the FLSA minimum for each hour worked, he has no viable claim. The FLSA does not govern wages that do not fall below the statutory minimum or hours that do not exceed the overtime threshold.

Some courts have recognized gap time claims by employees who exceed the overtime threshold, but whose employment contracts do not compensate them for all non-overtime hours, for example Monahan v. Cnty. of Chesterfield, Va., 95 F.3d 1263, 1272-73 (4th Cir. 1996); Valcho v. Dallas Cnty. Hosp. Dist., 658 F.Supp.2d 802, 811-12 (N.D.Tex. 2009) and Koelker v. Mayor & City Council of Cumberland, 599 F.Supp.2d 624, 635 (D.Md. 2009).

It agrees with existing authority and holds that pure gap time claims are outside the scope of the FLSA. The district court's finding, that, to the extent the plaintiffs seek recovery under the FLSA for hours worked but not compensated below the 40-hour weekly threshold, the FLSA does not provide a cause of action, was correct.

The district court did not address the possibility that the plaintiffs' gap time claims might constitute claims for "overtime gap time." "Overtime gap time" claims are to compensate for "gap time" work during workweeks with overtime hours. For example, if an employee is normally scheduled to work 37.5 hours and works 45 instead, he may seek overtime compensation for hours over 40, and straight-time pay for the "overtime gap time," the hours between 37.5 and 40. Overtime gap time claims require courts to determine whether plaintiffs' regular pay compensated them for all hours worked up to the overtime threshold. Here, the Third Circuit did not need to resolve this issue because the plaintiffs have not plausibly alleged that they worked overtime in any given week.