A lawsuit alleging that one of Amazon’s call centers in California did not offer the required meal breaks for employees has been moved to the federal court as lawyers seek class action status. First filed at the San Francisco County Superior Court in February, the case was removed to the United States District Court in California, Northern District on Friday.
Lovenia Scott, a former warehouse worker in Vacaville, California, claims that the company did not schedule 30-minute breaks for workers’ meals. When taking meal breaks, workers should monitor their walkie-talkies in the event of problems on the floor, which sometimes reduced rest time, the process says.
The issue of paying workers for the time they spend waiting for employers when they are out of working hours has also arisen in other cases. The Supreme Court ruled in 2014 that Amazon workers at a warehouse in Nevada were not entitled to pay for the time they spent waiting to have their bags searched after hitting the dot, but before leaving the building.
Earlier this month, in a separate case, Amazon and an independent contractor with whom he worked in California were fined $ 6.4 million for theft of wages by the California Labor Commission Office. The state investigation in that case found that Green Messengers, Amazon’s subcontractor, paid drivers badly, scheduling them for 10 hours a day, but with a workload that forced drivers to skip meal and rest breaks.
Because of the way meal breaks were organized in Vacaville, says Scott, many workers took their breaks at the same time. Queues were formed on the computer system, where employees passed their badges to mark the break time, which means that those at the end of the queue saw their breaks shortened while waiting for their turn. Scott’s lawsuit also says that shifts were “chronically insufficient”, which prevented some employees from taking short 10-minute breaks to finish their work on time.
In addition, workers have not been compensated for using their personal cell phones to perform work tasks, the suit said. Scott, who worked at the Vacaville warehouse from October 2016 to January 2019, also says that Amazon failed to pay its final salary on time.
Amazon has been arguing with US senators on Twitter in recent days through its @AmazonNews account, questioning – among other things – the accuracy of reports that some of its delivery drivers are so overwhelmed that they had to urinate in bottles because they didn’t take time to take breaks in the bathroom. Numerous news reports support this claim, however. And Monday is the deadline for workers at Amazon’s plant in Bessemer, Alabama, to vote on whether to form Amazon’s first union in the United States.
Amazon did not respond to a request for comment on Saturday.