Torrance, CAA California labor lawsuit has been filed against a Beverly Hills bakery, alleging violations of California labor laws. The lawsuit accuses the bakery’s owners of abusive behaviors, including failing to pay minimum wage or overtime, retaliation, and human trafficking.
According to court documents, the lawsuit was filed in March 2015 against L'Amande French Bakery, which is owned by Ana and Goncal Mointinho de Almeida and has locations in Beverly Hills and Torrance. Plaintiffs allege the defendants abused US immigration laws to get workers into the country, lied to workers to get them to the US and forced employees to work in “illegal, oppressive, and discriminatory conditions as domestic servants, physical laborers engaged in landscaping and building maintenance, and retail bakery workers doing a substantial amount of menial work at Defendant’s French bakeries.”
To keep employees in line, the defendants reportedly told the employees that if they did not work, they would each owe more than $11,000. Further, the lawsuit alleges the defendants threatened and intimidated employees into lying during a state labor enforcement agency investigation.
The plaintiffs allege they were told by the bakery’s owners that if they moved to the US from the Philippines, they would work as skilled bakery chefs and managers. Instead, they were put to work painting, cleaning and landscaping at a rental property for $2 an hour. Some workers were also forced to sleep on the floor in the Almeidas’ laundry room. Workers who were in the bakery were at first required to work 13 hours per day, seven days a week with no overtime and no sick days. The lawsuit alleges employees were paid as little as $3 an hour.
“To conceal evidence of these wage and hour violations, Defendants altered or destroyed the workers’ timecards and told them not to accurately report their actual time worked,” the lawsuit alleges. The defendants also isolated workers from each other and prevented them from speaking their native language. Employees were reportedly told if they worked for the bakery for three years, their $11,000 debt would be forgiven.
The plaintiffs allege that when they spoke out about their abuses they were retaliated against, including being fired or being written up.
Among the plaintiffs is a woman who said she was hired to be a nanny but spent less than 20 percent of her time on nanny duties and was instead forced into domestic servant roles.
The workers say they were all brought to the US under the E-2 visa process, which allows wealthy foreign nationals to bring foreign workers to the US to be engaged in executive or supervisory duties, or because of specialized skills essential to a company’s success.