In the retail industry, there is a long-standing, quiet, and mostly uncontested practice. If you give an employee a title that sounds like management and transfer them to a salary, all of a sudden the overtime requirements associated with hourly work cease to exist. This is not a brand-new playbook. However, occasionally someone chooses to fight back, and that’s essentially what’s happening with the lawsuit that Hy-Vee is currently facing.
Dawn Nicosia, a former employee, is named as the principal plaintiff in a proposed class-action lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa. From January 2024 to May 2025, Nicosia managed a bakery at a Hy-Vee store in Peoria, Illinois. She regularly worked more than 40 hours a week without receiving any overtime compensation, according to the lawsuit. In accordance with the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, the lawsuit seeks unpaid overtime wages as well as penalties and interest.
For its part, Hy-Vee has more than 240 retail locations in Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. It’s the kind of substantial impact that makes a class-action lawsuit worth considering, not only for the business but also for anybody observing how big grocery chains control labor expenses. According to a Hy-Vee representative, the company thinks the lawsuit and its accusations are baseless, and the issue will be resolved through the legal system. That’s a pretty typical answer, and it might work. However, it is difficult to ignore the complaint’s specifics.
Department managers in charge of bakeries, food service, meat, and produce, as well as trainee-level department managers, are among the tier of salaried positions below store director and assistant store director that are targeted by the lawsuit. The main contention is that, in spite of their titles, these positions don’t genuinely entail what the law defines as management work. The lawsuit alleges that the obligations associated with the overtime exemption—hiring, firing, disciplining employees, and using meaningful independent judgment—are mostly lacking. Rather, the majority of these workers’ hours are spent performing physical labor, such as lifting, moving, and floor work. According to the lawsuit, their work is not significantly different from that of hourly workers who are not exempt.
It’s worth taking a moment to consider that. There is a reason why executive employees are exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act. It was intended for those who actually oversee operations, make decisions that have an impact on staffing, and hold real institutional authority. Sure, a manager of the bakery department at a local grocery store may be responsible, but how can they effectively oversee the work of others? According to the lawsuit, that wasn’t actually the case. It’s another matter entirely whether a jury or judge finds in the end.
The claim that Hy-Vee requires these salaried department managers to work a minimum of 45 hours per week for the entire company lends credence to the complaint. If correct, that detail is important. It implies that this isn’t a scheduling error or a one-store anomaly. It’s a structural arrangement that is integrated, uniform, and consistent throughout. The lawsuit also alleges that department managers’ earlier complaints regarding unpaid overtime were not thoroughly looked into, which the plaintiffs use as proof that the infractions were deliberate rather than unintentional.
Since the Hy-Vee Department Manager Lawsuit is still in its early stages, the business is free to vigorously contest its merits. The number of plaintiffs who would eventually be included is still unknown, and class-action status has not yet been granted. However, the fundamental question it poses is not unique to Hy-Vee. For more than 20 years, retail labor classification disputes have arisen at chains all over the nation. As these cases mount, it seems as though the grocery and retail sectors are still figuring out where to draw the line between supervising and stocking shelves, as well as who has the final say.
