Filing claims Abbott left award pay out of overtime for hourly staff
Abbott Laboratories is facing allegations that it underpaid hourly workers on overtime by leaving out certain earnings from its pay calculations.
On November 25, 2025, a filing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois laid out claims by warehouse associate Kassandra Dominguez, who says the company failed to pay her, and other hourly staff, all the overtime they were due under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), 29 U.S.C. §§ 201, et seq.
Dominguez is described in the filing as an adult resident of Beach Park, Illinois. According to the document, she worked for Abbott from approximately April 11, 2021 through June 3, 2025 as a non-exempt, hourly warehouse associate in or around the North Chicago K-2 Complex in Illinois. Her most recent base hourly rate of pay was $24.40.
Abbott, an Illinois corporation headquartered in Abbott Park, is described as “an innovator and manufacturer of health-related products and technologies” that provides its services worldwide and throughout the United States, with multiple locations including in Illinois.
The core of the case centers on how Abbott allegedly calculated overtime for non-exempt hourly employees. Dominguez claims that, in addition to a base hourly wage, Abbott paid various forms of routine, non-discretionary compensation, including periodic “Award Pay.” She alleges the company failed to properly factor that Award Pay and other non-discretionary remuneration into the “regular rate” used to calculate overtime.
The filing cites FLSA provisions and regulations on the regular rate, stating that there is a presumption that remuneration in any form must be included in that rate unless specifically excluded by statute. It asserts that Abbott’s Award Pay and other non-discretionary payments do not fall into any of the statutory exclusions and therefore should have been included when computing overtime rates.
The document offers one specific example: for the pay period from November 11, 2024 through November 17, 2024, Dominguez alleges she worked 42.25 hours at a base hourly rate of $24.1673, with an overtime rate of $36.2509 and gross earnings of $1,048.28, including $76.45 in Award Pay. According to the filing, Abbott did not include the Award Pay in the overtime rate calculation and, as alleged in the document, therefore violated the FLSA.
Dominguez also alleges that other hourly employees across Abbott’s U.S. locations were paid in a similar way. The filing states, upon information and belief, that Abbott used a centralized payroll system that calculated overtime “in the same manner at each location and for all Hourly Employees,” and that there are thousands of similarly situated current and former employees who were not paid their required wages.
She seeks to proceed on behalf of all of Abbott’s current and former hourly employees who worked at any U.S. location in the past three years. The relief requested includes designation of a collective, contact information for potential opt-in employees, a complete accounting of compensation allegedly owed, back pay, an equal amount in liquidated damages, pre- and post-judgment interest, costs, and attorneys’ fees, as well as a service payment to the named plaintiff.
The filing also asks for a declaratory judgment that the pay practices described are unlawful under the FLSA.
At this stage, the case consists of allegations in a newly filed action. No court has made any findings on liability, damages, or whether a collective will ultimately be certified.
