A former CrossCountry Mortgage mortgage officer is suing the mortgage firm for allegedly failing to reimburse staff for remote business-related bills.
By doing so, CrossCountry violated a state regulation, which protects staff from wage-related points, the suit lodged May 3 in a federal court docket in Illinois, claims.
The plaintiff, April Shakoor, who labored at CrossCountry from 2019 to 2020, says the mortgage store imposed sure necessities equivalent to excessive pace web for remote work, however didn’t pay staff again for the bills. She is asking the court docket to certify the suit as a category motion.
CrossCountry Mortgage declined to touch upon pending litigation.
The Illinois Wage Payment and Collection Act mandates that employers compensate their staff for all needed expenditures or losses incurred straight associated to providers carried out for the employer.
The criticism lodged in opposition to CrossCountry lists a quantity expenditures that staff allegedly paid out of pocket however weren’t reimbursed for, equivalent to high-speed web, a devoted telephone, and residential workplace bills. To save on prices stemming from sustaining an workplace house, CrossCountry as a substitute opted to “cross the expense of offering the identical to plaintiff and the IWPCA class members with out reimbursing them for any of the bills for offering and sustaining the identical,” the suit mentioned.
Per the plaintiff, CrossCountry required its staff to present and keep a “quiet, devoted, clutter-free work house,” designed to be sure that its model requirements have been met. It additionally referred to as for mortgage officers to work on its software program platform, which necessitated a high-speed web connection.
“CrossCountry violated the IWPCA by failing to adequately reimburse the plaintiff and the IWPCA class members for the gear, web, cellular phone, and remote workplace bills needed to carry out their job duties for CrossCountry,” the criticism mentioned.
If licensed, the potential class contains over 100 folks and the quantity in controversy exceeds $5 million, the suit reads.
Early final yr, CrossCountry was additionally accused of allegedly failing to pay staff in 2022 and illegally forcing a former employee to return a large sign-on bonus. This suit, too, was in search of class motion standing and claimed the lender violated the Fair Labor Standards Act and New Jersey state regulation. The case was dismissed in late 2023.
