A federal appeals court ruled Monday that a group of FedEx Corp. employees who claim the company failed to pay them for all hours worked cannot form a class action group.

A three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday upheld a federal judge's decision to block the hourly employees from filing a class action lawsuit.

The judge had ruled that the court inquiries into each employee's individual situation would "swamp" any of the group's common issues.

The employees contend that FedEx has engaged in a "pervasive and long-standing policy" of failing to pay hourly employees for all time worked.

FedEx hourly employees are required to manually enter their scheduled start, end and break times into a hand-held tracker. But employees also use time cards as a backup tracking method.

The group claims they frequently worked during unpaid breaks. They also say they weren't paid for the gap periods between punching in or out on a time clock and when they actually started or finished work.

For example, if an employee punched in at 7:45 a.m. but entered a start time of 8 a.m. into the tracker, there would be a 15-minute gap for which the employee would not be paid.

A spokesman for FedEx wasn't immediately able to comment on the ruling Monday.