Fitness Employee Lawsuit Seeks Unpaid Wages for Personal Trainers

Trainers at California Family Fitness have filed a fitness employee lawsuit against the company, claiming that the company underpaid overtime and violated other wage and hour laws.

Last month, two California Family Fitness trainers have accused their employer of ten violations. According to the trainers, the company did not pay them for certain work performed, denied workers overtime pay, and did not pay for the employees to take meal breaks. This led to a fitness employee lawsuit. 

In the California Family Fitness class action lawsuit, the trainers seek damages from the company, in the amount of $4,000 for each trainer who was affected by the company’s allegedly unlawful practices, to compensate for legal violations and the trainers’ alleged financial damages.

In total, this means that the regional fitness company could be hit with up to $1.2 million in penalties, as the company owns 20 gyms in the Sacramento region of California. Up to 300 trainers could be included in the California Family Fitness wage and hour class action lawsuit, as the trainers who filed the gym employee class action lawsuit argue that the company’s practices negatively affected trainers across the organization’s gym locations.

According to the trainers in the fitness employee lawsuit, the company did not pay them for the work they did when preparing for gym classes, or for work performed after classes, including paperwork. The trainers also claimed that the companies were not given breaks, and when they took meal breaks, were not paid wages for that time, which is guaranteed by law.

California Family Fitness rejects the allegations in the California fitness employee lawsuit. In an emailed statement, the company’s vice president of human resources, Robert Brittany, said that “California Family Fitness prides itself on operating with integrity and creating a positive work environment where employees are respected and have the opportunity to thrive,” according to a Sacramento Business Journal article.

The company declined to give further details on the allegations. In the same emailed statement, Brittany went on to say that “out of respect to employees’ privacy we do not speak to the details of ongoing personnel matters.”

Wage and hour class action lawsuits have been cropping up in California courts lately, as workers attempt to hold employers accountable for a range of alleged violations of wage and labor laws.

In a case similar to the fitness employee lawsuit, three nurses filed a wage class action lawsuit against Dignity Health. The nurses claimed that the company’s time-keeping software reduced their overtime pay by up to two and a half hours per week from what they should be paid. 

In July, the California Supreme Court heard a class action lawsuit against Starbucks. In this case, the court determined that employees must be paid for any time they spend working, even if that work is done outside of a scheduled shift, or if it is done in a small amount of time. This decision was made after baristas claimed that they were made to do work before or after their scheduled shifts, but were not paid for that work.

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