Art Institute of California Accused of Violating Minimum Wage Laws

A California art school has been accused of failing to pay their professors according to minimum wage laws.

The plaintiffs involved in the California employee rights class action lawsuit are former teachers at the Art Institute of California’s San Diego campus. The teachers, Marie D. and Elle W., filed the wage and hourclass action lawsuit on April 7.

The plaintiffs claimed that the parent company of the Art Institute, Education Management Corporation, failed to pay them according to minimum wage laws. The class action lawsuit further claims that the company did not provide their employees adequate paid rest periods or compensate for phone use.

Marie and Elle claim that the company paid them each $57 per hour that they spent in the classroom. However, the plaintiffs allege that they were not paid for other hours that they worked, including lesson plan preparation, office hours, tutoring and mentoring students, grading, and teacher development courses.

Their wage and hour class action lawsuit extended across 15 pages, detailing the alleged violations of minimum wage laws.

“Course pay failed to compensate class members at all for the many hours of work that they were required to perform and did perform outside of classroom time,” stated the professors in their minimum wage class action lawsuit.

Although the school required that professors communicate with students by telephone, it failed to compensate them for cellphone usage. The wage and hour class action lawsuit further stated that though California minimum wage laws require a paid rest break every three and a half hours, teachers were instead required to meet with students for tutoring or mentoring during the time when they would have taken a break.

According to the plaintiffs, Education Management’s past has included other questionable practices that this new wage and hour class action lawsuit falls in line with.

“Another aspect of that pattern of illegality was its abusive recruiting practices that lured students into defendant’s for-profit educational programs and then failed to provide requisite educational services,” the minimum wage class action lawsuit states.

Because of this former complaint that the school had used fraudulent means to recruit its students, Education Management paid a settlement of $95 million to the Department of Justice and to 39 different state attorney generals. The settlement also required the forgiveness of multiple student loans, as well as forced the school to revise its recruitment plan significantly.

Education Management owns nearly 110 schools.

The class action lawsuit seeks to establish that the school violated minimum wage laws and state labor laws. The plaintiffs also hope that the company pays them back for minimum wages and missed breaks as well as other expenses.

California has penalties for failing to meet wage and hour laws, including minimum wage laws.

If you or someone you know has experienced California wage and hour violations such as failure to be paid according to minimum wage laws, you may be able to file a claim.

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If you were forced to work off the clock or without overtime pay in California within the past 2 to 3 years, you have rights – and you don’t have to take on the company alone.

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