Current and former Wells Fargo technical support staff who installed, maintained and supported the bank's software and hardware, filed a complaint in 2008 charging that they should have been paid overtime for hours worked over 40 per week.

According to law firm Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, a judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California has now granted plaintiffs' motion for certification of the case as a collective action.

The law firm estimates that around 3000 employees are eligible to participate in the suit, which includes overtime claims under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) as well as the laws of California and Minnesota.

The new court order covers all network engineers, operating systems engineers, information security analysts, technical service specialists, systems support analysts, web engineers, web support engineers, web systems engineers, operating systems analysts (level 2), systems QA analysts (levels 2 or 3), computer operations analysts (levels 3 or 4), database administrators (levels 2 or 3), and applications systems engineers (level 3) who worked for Wells Fargo as exempt employees at any time during the past three years anywhere in the United States.

Eligible staff will now be sent a form and have 75 days to join the case.

Kelly Dermody, Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, says: "In granting certification, the Court conditionally recognizes that these employees have similar job duties, such that addressing their claims in a single action - rather than many individual lawsuits - is appropriate. We look forward to proving at trial that Wells Fargo misclassified certain IT workers under federal and state wage and hour laws as exempt from overtime pay."

Earlier this year two back-office derivatives employees launched a suit against Merrill Lynch, and its new owner Bank of America, over claims they had not been paid overtime owed under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.