A former beauty school student filed a wage and hour class action lawsuit against Aveda Corp. and its owner Estee Lauder Inc., accusing the companies of treating trainees as unpaid employees, in violation of state and federal labor law.
Plaintiff Jazlyn Jennings trained at the Aveda Institute Los Angeles from April 2011 to June 2012, where she provided haircuts, manicures, makeovers and other services to customers without compensation. She contends in the Aveda wage class action lawsuit that the Aveda Institute used her, and other students, to perform unpaid work. According to the wage and hour lawsuit, the defendants “led plaintiff and others to believe that they were paying tuition to learn the skills required to succeed in the exciting world of beauty and cosmetology. Instead, they converted students into student employees to profit from their free labor.”
The wage and hour class action lawsuit alleges that the institute’s staff did not properly supervise students who paid “thousands or tens of thousands” for the yearlong training program. For the 40 students working on the salon floor, there were just four supervisors, which is reportedly in violation of California state regulations. By having students provide full beauty treatments (instead of assisting) with insufficient supervision, Aveda treated its students as employees instead of apprentices.
According to California Labor Law and the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, employees are entitled to at least minimum wage. By failing to pay its “student employees,” the wage and hour lawsuit claims that Aveda violated these minimum wage requirements.
Employee Rights
“Student employees,” Jennings notes, are due fair employee treatment, which was not received. The Aveda Institute allegedly failed to pay overtime, did not provide proper meal and rest breaks, did not provide accurate wage statements, and engaged in unfair business practices. Moreover, because they utilized students as free labor, the defendants were “able to generate a profit even by providing services to the general public at fees that are much lower than those of the competition because of their unnaturally low operating costs.”
Jennings is seeking to represent a class of individuals who provided beauty services or sold products to paying customers in the named Aveda institutes from April 22, 2010, to the present. The class may also include student employees who cleaned or provided support services to Aveda’s beauty institutes in California, according to the unpaid overtime lawsuit.
Along with the Aveda Institute Los Angeles, Jennings also names the company’s San Francisco-based school, the Cinta Aveda Institute Inc., and its Southeast institute operator, Beauty Basics Inc.
Jennings is requesting restitution from Aveda for failure to pay wages for all time worked under California Labor Code and the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and, failure to pay overtime, failure to provide a second meal period or rest periods, unfair business practices and unjust enrichment.
The wage and hour lawsuit is Jazlyn Jennings v. Estee Lauder, et al., Case No. BC543276, in the Superior Court of the State of California, County of Los Angeles, Central District.
Were You a Victim of a Wage & Hour Violation?
As employees become wise to their rights under state and federal labor laws, and pursue justice, hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid wages and unpaid overtime are awarded. Class action lawsuits alleging wage and hour violations have risen 400 percent since 2000.
As employers look to get the most out of employees while cutting costs, many workers find themselves working off the clock without overtime pay and are misclassified as exempt from overtime pay. If you were forced to work off the clock or without overtime pay compensation within the past two to three years, you have rights. Learn more at the Unpaid Overtime Lawsuit: Wage & Hour, Overtime Pay Class Action Lawsuit Investigation.
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24 thoughts onAveda Beauty School Student Sues for Unpaid Work
Same story here at Aveda Institute Tucson (AZ). We paid for our kits and are made to perform services unsupervised with the products that we (the students) paid for, including $15 for our high frequency wands yet Aveda collets the service payment as an “add on.” We’ve performed hundreds of hours doings laundry and are often made to deep clean the clinic floor rooms. Not to mention the skin care trial where your model (in my case my mother) has to purchase 8 Aveda products in order to receive full credit. They have been out of the SPF for almost my entire time here at Aveda yet we get docked a point due to their lack of stock. I HATE THIS PLACE AND I WISH I NEVER SPENT MY MONEY COMING HERE.
I went to the Aveda Institute Houston and Agree with this suit and wonder where me and my whole class can sign up. We were belittled by educators and treated as actual employees. I never learned short hair cuts but had them performed by me so they could get the $18 for the cut. I was FORCED to do someone’s hair with a life investation. I have pictures and videos of the live lice crawling on my equipment. I am paying 25k and I do not know how to cut hair. I was laughed at for not understanding a cut the first lesson. Models and mannequins were hardly checked. I had a class mate kicked out of school bc she had Lyme disease and was sick too often and they weren’t getting money for her. I had another class mate pay 25k in full amount and dropout halfway. Not only did they not refund her 10k they have 60 debt collectors calling her everyday for a $5000 drop out fee, after she already paid a $200 one before. My black friends had racist and passive aggressive remarks thrown at them on a regular basis. Educators berating girls for their clothing but letting their favorites wear whatever they want. There was several days **pictures for proof that girls were so booke for TEN HOURS they were not even scheduled a lunch. Actually, once you move to the masters floor, there is hardly a thing known as lunch. “Donations” or our tips.. were “lost” ON A DAILY BASIS. I have had to take 3k in classes since i graduated 6 mo ago and have learned more from all of those than i did that concentration camp. If there is a place we’re i can sign up for this suit let me know, i know several others who would want to sign too.
Not to mention this school is also disgusting. Not once did i see the floors mopped, hardly sweeper. There is NEVER soap in the students bathroom, the school “never had money” but earned 2 mil. When my class started alone. The shampoo room has a decorated cylinder filled with pebbles that have a layer of dust so thick the rocks all look grey. It is actual dirt, dust and hair. To go along with the being forced to do a client with lice in her hair, the school did nothing to try and contain the investatuon that had just been shampooed, 5 tunes and used SEVERAL TOWELS to wash her hair *bc the “educators” kept telling me it was dandruff and NOT ACTUAL BUGS AND EGG SACKS* the only thing they did was throw away all of my empliments and NEVER replaced any of them. I pad for a kit that was $3000 when i added all of the prices together they spent about 1300 on our kits and the rest I’m not really sure? The shears we were given were so full they bent the hair and they never had a sharpener come in. You were forced to do hair/ manicures/ pedicured even if you were sick. When TDLR would come they would have us take written tests and no one was allowed to go around the school. They took away any form of storage for food and had microwaves ridden with roaches so you had to buy your food every day or bring non perishables. You are treated like dirt if you tell and educator you don’t feel comfortable doing a cut/color/wax. One educator specifically made everyone do the absolutely longest procedure to get any hair style done in spot of certain people. The list could go on. The way this place is fan is disgusting. No educators of color bc they all get hired and scared away. Our woman who controlled donackal aid messes it up so badly half of the girls at my school had trouble staying in in the last weeks of the year. The school messed JP their own money situation they tried to convince graduates that they had to oh thousands more to the school to be able to get their license bc”they had to schedule it for you”. The institute is a joke and a corruption for a big company to earn hundreds of thousands daily of off innocent men and women who have a dream they want to achieve.
My 19 year old daughter is in the same situation with this school . I do not want to go into it because I may be filing a lawsuit against them. Please reach out
Serious complaints about Corpus Christi Texas Aveda. No pay for work performed and if you receive a tip aveda places it on and aveda gift card making sure they keep the money by forcing you to spend it there at their aveda shop. Also they inaccurately report hours earned by the school to keep your financial aide. Please help
I attend Aveda institute Lafayette!
I want to start off by saying this place needs to be investigated! Not just sending in a cooperate member but by sending in a person acting like a student, under coverboss style. This school literally makes “rules” up as they go Because the people In charge are real good at tightening up super fast when they get wind that cooperate is coming in.. The staff members are disrespectful towards the students and disregard the students health and well being. The “educators” if you can even call them that are more caught up in their social lives outside of school then worried about educating their students. On more than one instant they have not only used me but my fellow students as slaves or as my lawyer called it “unpaid workers” where as a student we’ve been forced to take multiple services back to back all day with out a break or even a lunch. Not only am I a student but I’m a high risk pregnancy. My doctors has sent excuses to notify the school that I need to take frequent breaks because of that reason and they still on several occasions made me take services back to back and not able to break as needed or even have a lunch and if you even get a break not even five minutes later they’re coming to the patio and screaming on you to get off the patio. on two occasions they put me in dispense because my nose was bleeding from a complication of my pregnancy BUT I WAS TOLD IM NOT ALLOUD TO SIT IN DISPENSE. I’m not even the only women that has been pregnant and experienced this in the year that I have attended Aveda Institute Lafayette. But honestly what can you expect when the dean is never here and when she is here she’s outside working out or bringing her kids in to get free services. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg, the “educator” Christina not only choose favorites in the class and actually let a student split up our intro class when we graduated from intro into foundations. She also would call you out for wearing “natural” make up and insisted that you must wear bold colors or she would write you up. That’s the tip of the iceberg with Christina, when we had models she would make you look stupid in front of the clients,and it wasn’t only during intro she continued to Make students look stupid in front clients and our peers,so bad that even clients have told Christina something. Annie and Keri on a daily basis can be found on the masters floor talking and gossiping about students/clients and sometimes other students are in on it. They both often make rude comments to the students. Clients have often commented about the way Annie carries her self as a staff member and “bullies” the students. The staff also will just pass anybody along, we had the first biggest class at Aveda and we had a guy named Gregory Mouton in our class he would continually make all the female students uncomfortable by making unwanted sexual remarks even to the girls not in our class and nothing was ever done. He would never complete a haircut on the floor by himself or would he ever finish an assesment, but they passed him right on through without even a shed of regret or remorse knowing that he needed more practice and help in that phase and made other students that were capable and finished the assessment retake it where as the guy who couldn’t even understand how to section and never even got 1/2 way through the assessments got to just pass. Then Gregory continued to make his clients uncomfortable after we got on the floor and they his clients would complain about him rubbing them for “20/25 minutes” and him heavily breathing on them, a few times his clients would beg us not to leave them alone with him in the pedicure room because they were so creeped out, we notified the educators and the head staff members in charge just brushed it off. And now he’s graduated and classes before him have warned they’re employers about how creepy and unprofessional he is and if they hire him they will all quit. On another note, the Aveda Lafayette campus is so unprofessional, but as soon as they know cooperate is coming they pretend to be the perfect team and actually act like they wanna be here. Many students have dropped out because they simply hate waking up and coming to school several fellow students have said “I literally want to cry everyday because I don’t wanna be here” but they love doing hair and won’t let the unprofessionalism and prison like culture of this place get in the way of their dreams. But trust me it’s one big rouge, I can say they have a good admissions advisor because Angie sure does sell this place and talk it up. And then Aveda butters you up the first week with camp Aveda.. Good thing we have our learn Aveda and YouTube that teaches us how to do hair because none of the educators do they just make sure we make an 88 on our tests. As in if you failed it the first time they made you “retake it” that day and just slapped and 88 on its considered passing. I could go on and on about the things wrong with this school, the staff but honestly it’s up to cooperate to do something about it for the next classes wellbeing!
If you don’t complete the course you have to pay for the cost of attending. It is a rip off! Don’t try and transfer you will have to start fresh and pay all fees again.
I am trying to file a unlawful termination and harassment complaint against cinta Aveda institute in San Francisco, ca.
The bottom of this article has a link to a TCA investigation article about unpaid wages. The article includes a form you can fill out to see if you qualify to participate in a class action lawsuit investigation. Attorneys review the submissions and will contact you directly if you qualify.
Baton Rouge LA is the SAME way!!!
We are experiencing these same problems here in Orlando/Winter Garden ,FL. location….Plus my daughter has RA which they have known about. The treatment of the students, lack of professionalism, lack of organization, longer hours than other cosmetology schools, lack of supervision, lack of teaching, and poorly handled client/ guest skills are atrocious!!!This is too much money being invested to conduct a school or business this way!If there is a way for us to pull our daughter out, another class action law suit in FLA……anything that can help please contact me!!!!
The bottom of this article has a link to a TCA investigation article about unpaid wages. The article includes a form you can fill out to see if you qualify to participate in a class action lawsuit investigation. Attorneys review the submissions and will contact you directly if you qualify.