$12M Class Action over missed reporting time pay
Employment Law Daily recently reported on the class action lawsuit, Casas Mayra Casas v. Victoria’s Secret Stores in which 40,000 store clerks and other non-exempt employees are claiming the franchise failed to adhere to California's "reporting time" pay laws.
These non-exempt employees alleged that they were required to call into their managers two-hours before certain scheduled shifts to see if they were actually needed for work that day. When employees called in and were told they were not needed, this also meant they were not allowed to work that day, reaping large opportunity costs on workers who could then not schedule shifts at other employers, attend class, or even take advantage of their time off.
The state of California has what is called a "reporting time pay" law that helps alleviate some of these opportunity costs. According to the State of California Department of Industrial Relations website, employees are eligible to receive partial pay for unworked call-in time under the below circumstances:
"Each workday an employee is required to report to work, but is not put to work or is furnished with less than half of his or her usual or scheduled day's work, the employee must be paid for half the usual or scheduled day's work, but in no event for less than two hours nor more than four hours, at his or her regular rate of pay.
For example, if an employee is scheduled to report to work for an eight-hour shift and only works for one hour, the employer is nonetheless obligated to pay the employee four hours of pay at his or her regular rate of pay (one for the hour worked, and three as reporting time pay). Only the one-hour actually worked, however, counts as actual hours worked.
If an employee is required to report to work a second time in any one workday and is furnished less than two hours of work on the second reporting, he or she must be paid for two hours at his or her regular rate of pay"
According to the article in Employment Law Daily, a proposed $12M settlement agreement ($8.1M net) is being reviewed as compensation for unpaid reporting time for the 40,000+ non-exempt employees of Victoria's Secret.
