Result: $1.45 million settlement
Year: 2011

$1,450,000 Settlement Reached for 133 Employees in Premera Overtime Lawsuit

We are happy to report that the parties have reached a settlement, which was presented to the Court for final approval on June 10, 2011.

The settlement provides that $1.45 million (minus attorneys’ fees and costs, costs of administration, and a class representative service award) will be paid out to the approximately 133 class members. The average net recovery per class member is over $7,000 each.

The class is defined as Premera employees who worked at any time between April 7, 2006 to early 2011 in the following positions:

• Application Support Engineer I & II;
• Database Administrator I;
• Information Security Administrator III;
• IT Analyst I & II;
• Network Administrator III;
• PeopleSoft Systems Administrator;
• Production Control Analyst III;
• Senior Middleware Administrator;
• Senior Network Administrator;
• Senior Systems Administrator;
• Software QA Analyst;
• Software Test Engineer I;
• System Administrator – HCS;
• Systems Administrator I, II, & III;
• Systems Engineer IT;
• Telecommunications Administrator I, II, & III; and
• Telecommunications Engineer I

Final approval was granted on August 26, 2011, and checks will be mailed by September 30, 2011.

More information is available at the Settlement Administrator’s website ( http://pbcclassaction.com/).

Background on Premera Employee Overtime Complaints Litigation

In April 2010, a technical support worker at Premera Blue Cross (“Premera”) filed a class action lawsuit against Premera, and its subsidiaries LifeWise Health Plan of Oregon and LifeWise Assurances, Co., seeking overtime pay. Premera’s technical support workers are responsible for installing, maintaining, and/or supporting computer software and hardware. The complaint alleges that Premera has a common practice of misclassifying its technical support workers as exempt and failing to pay them for all overtime hours worked in violation of federal overtime pay laws. these workers were unlawfully denied overtime pay.