As we have previously addressed in our blogs, grocery stores in California have been facing a variety of legal woes, including a lawsuit filed by Ford & Diulio PC against Fresh & Easy for failure to provide adequate notice of store closures and layoffs. Now Albertsons is facing putative class action litigation for failure to properly pay employee wages.
A proposed class action pending in California federal court alleges that Albertsons hasn’t paid its hourly employees at certain stores all of the wages they earned between September and December 2015. The stores at issue are ones that Albertsons purchased from Haggen when its competitor filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Current and former employees at those stores claim that Albertsons did not provide paychecks, pay stubs or any pay at all for several weeks/months after buying the stores from Haggen in September 2015. In addition, employees who quit or were laid off weren’t paid there wages as required by California law, making Albertson liable for waiting time penalties in addition to the unpaid compensation.
The plaintiffs want to certify a class of all current and former hourly employees in California over the last four years who didn’t receive regular paychecks. The case is Luna et al. v. Albertsons Companies Inc. et al., case number 2:16-cv-01107 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.
For more information on wage and hour litigation in the grocery industry, contact Ford & Diulio PC’s experienced Orange County employment attorneys at jdiulio@forddiulio.com or 714-384-5540.