After California brokers won $37 million in an overtime lawsuit against Merrill Lynch in August, a slew of copycat lawsuits have been filed against other brokerage firms, many of them in New York. Some of the firms that have been named include Morgan Stanley, Smith Barney, UBS Financial Services, Wachovia and Ryan Beck. The lawsuits allege that the brokerages improperly exempted brokers from qualifying for overtime pay and docked their compensation to pay for things like administrative assistants and other support. Some firms are reportedly considering revamping their compensation practices to include a base salary for employees paid on a transaction basis because federal law exempts some employees with a “minimum guaranteed salary” from overtime pay.
