After three years of waiting, a group of assistant managers at Foot Locker Inc. has won class certification in a wage and hour lawsuit against the athletic goods retailer.

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein of the Southern District of New York certified the state collective action on Jan. 20, rejecting claims by the defendant that the employees could not prove commonality.

In their complaint, the assistant managers allege that Foot Locker violated both New York and federal labor laws by letting store managers alter employees' time sheets to understate the number of hours they had actually worked. Moreover, the complaint alleges, the managers did this "to meet budgetary constraints concerning total payroll per store," and "managers get penalized if they exceed those budgets."

The plaintiffs also claim that managers have required hourly employees to work off the clock at times.

In court documents, Foot Locker denied engaging in widespread wage and hour abuses, holding that the practices alleged by the plaintiffs "would be in direct violation of Foot Locker's longstanding time clock policies."

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