Surge Staffing Lawsuit: Overtime Collective, FMLA, and Coverage

Surge Staffing, the Columbus, Ohio temporary staffing firm, is defending at least two active federal lawsuits: a Fair Labor Standards Act collective action accusing the company of misclassifying Staffing Specialists and Talent Advisors to avoid paying overtime, and a 2026 case brought by a former employee raising Family and Medical Leave Act and civil rights claims against Surge, its president Ryan Mason, and seven affiliated entities.

The Overtime Collective Action

The overtime case, filed June 30, 2023 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio (Case No. 2:23-cv-2113), is often cited as Bunger v. Surge Staffing. It covers people who worked for Surge as Staffing Specialists, Bilingual Staffing Specialists, Senior Staffing Specialists, or Talent Advisors, the title the company adopted in 2023.¹

Surge treated these workers as exempt from overtime. The plaintiffs say that was wrong on all three legs of the FLSA exemption test.

On duties, named plaintiff Jennifer Bunger described her job as reviewing resumes, interviewing applicants, and coaching temporary workers, with final hiring decisions kicked up to a supervisor. That, she argues, is not the kind of independent judgment the administrative or executive exemptions require.¹

On salary level, the complaint alleges that Surge’s pay practices sometimes produced weekly compensation below $684, the minimum an exempt employee must be paid under current federal rules.²

On salary basis, the plaintiffs say their pay was not a true salary because it fluctuated with hours worked. When employees missed time or left partway through a day, Surge reduced their compensation and called it “unpaid time.” The FLSA requires that an exempt employee’s pay be a fixed, predetermined amount each pay period that does not shrink based on how many hours the person actually works.¹

Surge has denied the claims. The company argues the workers were properly classified and that any reductions in pay were tied to the exhaustion of paid time off, not to the amount of work performed.

Who Gets Notice, and the Arbitration Cutoff

In June 2024 the court found a “strong likelihood” that Staffing Specialists and Talent Advisors were similarly situated and granted court-facilitated notice. Notice went to workers who held those roles between December 4, 2020 and September 12, 2023.³

The September 12, 2023 cutoff matters. After that date, Surge required newly hired Talent Advisors to sign mandatory arbitration agreements covering wage and hour, discrimination, harassment, retaliation, and breach of contract claims. The court agreed with Surge that employees who signed those agreements could not be sent notice of the collective action and would have to pursue any claims in individual arbitration instead.¹

If the plaintiffs prevail, participating employees could recover unpaid overtime going back up to three years, an equal amount in liquidated damages, plus attorneys’ fees and costs.³ As of mid-2024 the case was still active with no reported settlement.

The FMLA and Civil Rights Case

The second suit, White v. Surge Staffing, LLC et al. (Case No. 2:26-cv-00252), was filed by former employee Dawn White in Franklin County Common Pleas Court and removed to federal court on March 3, 2026. The nature-of-suit designation is Civil Rights – Employment, with a cause of action under the FMLA.⁴

The defendant list runs well beyond Surge Staffing itself. It includes Surgeforce LLC, Columbia Woodlands LLC, Daily Services LLC, I-Force Labor LLC, Iforce LLC, and Mason Equity Group LLC, along with individuals Ryan Mason and Bradley Lambert. All nine defendants share a Columbus business address at 4 Easton Oval.⁴

The complaint itself is not publicly available in these records, so the specific factual allegations are not on the docket in a form the public can read. What the filings do show is that White has submitted a right-to-sue letter from the Ohio Civil Rights Commission pertaining to Bradley Lambert, and that the defendants have moved to dismiss for failure to state a claim and to strike portions of the complaint. Discovery is scheduled to run through January 31, 2027.⁵⁴

How to Tell If You Are Covered

For the overtime case, the relevant question is straightforward. If you worked for Surge as a Staffing Specialist, Bilingual Staffing Specialist, Senior Staffing Specialist, or Talent Advisor between December 4, 2020 and September 12, 2023, and you were treated as salaried and denied overtime, you are within the group the court authorized to receive notice. If you were hired into a Talent Advisor role after September 12, 2023, you likely signed an arbitration agreement and the court has already ruled you cannot join the collective action; any claim would go to individual arbitration.¹

Neither case involves Surge’s temporary workers placed at client sites. Both are about the internal branch employees who staffed those placements.

A Separate Case Where Surge Was the Plaintiff

One matter is easy to confuse with the employee suits but is different in kind. In Surge Staffing LLC v. Tolbert et al. (Case No. 1:2022cv05041) in the Northern District of Illinois, Surge sued former employees over alleged trade secret misappropriation. In January 2025, Magistrate Judge Young B. Kim sanctioned Surge for discovery violations, finding it had tried to expand its trade secret claims at the last minute through untimely amended interrogatory answers. The court struck those answers and barred Surge from using the newly disclosed information as trade secrets at trial, describing the late filing as an attempt to “hamper” the defense.⁶

1
GovInfo. Bunger v. Surge Staffing LLC, Case No. 2:23-cv-2113
2
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #17A: Exemption for Executive, Administrative, Professional, Computer and Outside Sales Employees
3
Coffman Employment Lawyers. Update in Staffing Specialist and Talent Advisor Lawsuit Against Surge Staffing
4
PacerMonitor. White v. Surge Staffing, LLC et al
5
CourtListener. White v. Surge Staffing, LLC
6
Justia. Surge Staffing LLC v. Tolbert et al