Third-Party Walmart Warehouse Pay Lawsuit Apparently Not a New Problem

Los Angeles, CA On October 12, an opinion piece published in the Los Angeles Times revealed that inspectors with the California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement swooped in on a huge, unidentified warehouse in Riverside County looking for infractions to California Labor Law. They allegedly found plenty - not the least of which was the failure of a logistics company working on behalf of retail giant Walmart to properly document the wages and hours worked by their employees.

There is no signage on such warehouses, which are owned and operated by the logistics company under contract to Walmart, according to the writer. The workers, identified as mostly Latino, are not paid by Walmart but rather work for, and are compensated by, the warehouse owner. Investigators determined that workers were paid in piecemeal fashion according to the number of containers they moved, at rates of pay not articulated to the workers or reflected on paychecks.

The logistics company was subsequently fined just shy of $500,000 for various violations to California labor code, and six warehouse workers subsequently filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking back wages and other forms of compensation.

Other workers toiling for similar warehouses in California and Chicago have launched lawsuits claiming their pay does not reflect the hours worked or tasks performed. While promised a rate of pay higher than that of minimum wage, paychecks have failed to properly reflect all hours worked. The resulting shortfall in hours serves to begat an actual rate of pay that comes in lower than the minimum wage rate in Chicago or mandated under California and labor law.

Judging from previous press reports, this is far from a new problem…

It was two years ago this month that the Chicago Tribune published the comments of plaintiff Miguel Deniz, who had visited a Chicago church with 20 of his co-workers, looking for help.

"I worked 57 hours and I only got paid for 35," said the 62-year-old Deniz. "I think it's unjust that we're not getting paid complete hours and for overtime. We're being defrauded."

In early December of 2009, Deniz joined seven other workers in the filing of a class-action lawsuit against SelectRemedy, an independent contractor doing work for Walmart. SelectRemedy was named as the defendant, although Walmart wasn't mentioned. In a statement published December 11, 2009 in the Chicago Tribune, a spokesperson for Walmart indicated that the retailer tries to comply "with all labor laws and regulations.

"And we rely on our third-party vendors to do the same," said Walmart spokeswoman Michelle Bradford.

In California, US District Court Judge Christina Snyder was reported to have issued a preliminary injunction requiring agencies that hire temporary workers to alter their pay practices, in an attempt to persuade the agencies to better conform to California state labor laws. It was issued October 31 of this year.