Caribou Brawl

Friday's recommendation is a boost to the lawsuits claiming that managers for Caribou, the country's No. 2 specialty coffee chain behind Starbucks, are more barista than boss and should be paid time-and-a-half for the 10 to 15 extra hours a week they regularly worked.

Federal and state laws say that all employees except managers are entitled to overtime pay for hours beyond a regular work week. The managers' wages average about $18 an hour.

"We are very pleased," said plaintiffs attorney Jon Tostrud of Los Angeles. "It permits us to proceed in a collective capacity."

U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeanne Graham's 43-page report goes to U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz, who will make the final decision on class-action status for the lawsuits. Schiltz was already scheduled to hear a separate motion by Minneapolis-based Caribou today to throw out both cases.

"Caribou firmly believes it has properly classified its store managers as exempt under the (Fair Labor Standards Act) and Minnesota law," said Joseph Sokolowski, of Minneapolis, one of the attorneys representing the company. "Caribou will be requesting that the district court review and reverse the magistrate's report and recommendation."

Graham found that the Caribou managers' circumstances are similar enough that they can argue their cases as a group, which for most plaintiffs can be strategically preferable to filing individual lawsuits.

The federal lawsuit, which requires managers to opt in if they want to be part of it, now covers about 300 current and former managers across the country, going back to May 2002.

The Minnesota lawsuit, in which eligible plaintiffs are automatically included, is expected to number from 150 to 400 managers, going back to May 2003.

Graham determined the managers qualify as a "similarly situated" group on three counts: Caribou has a single job description for all of its store managers; the managers all consistently worked more than 40 hours a week; and Caribou's own internal analysis looked at the store managers as a collective whole -- not one at a time -- when deciding whether they are exempt from overtime pay.

Caribou, which opened its first shop in 1992 in the Twin Cities, has more than 460 shops with more than 5,000 employees in 18 states and the District of Columbia, according to its Web site. Its coffee beans are also sold in around 2,300 grocery stores.