Crabtree & Evelyn Class Action Lawsuit Alleges Wage & Hour Violations

Luxury skin care product company Crabtree & Evelyn Ltd. has been hit with a class action lawsuit alleging that the company failed to pay overtime and denied store employees of their mandated meal breaks and resting periods.

Lead plaintiffs Irina Eremina, Fernando Hernandez and Lillian Zamora filed the wage and hour lawsuit against Crabtree in Los Angeles Superior Court, accusing the company of not providing work-free meal breaks and resting periods, and manipulating pay stubs to make it appear as if the state-law-mandated break time had been used.

According to the Crabtree & Evelyn class action lawsuit, the employees feel that they “have been prejudiced by [Crabtree & Evelyn’s] business practices.” Additionally, Crabtree allegedly instructed its managers to sign false time cards, showing that the employees took their meal breaks or resting time whether or not they had. According to California state law, these resting periods are required by employers to allow their employee to have 15 minutes of duty-free periods of time, where they are not required to perform any activity related to work.

As a result of the altered time cards, employees were given inaccurate wage statements that did not reflect the amount of time the employees were actually on duty. Furthermore, the wage statements did not contain any overtime payment amounts, and failed to compensate the employees for their missed breaks, the wage and hour lawsuit claims.

The proposed unpaid overtime class actions lawsuit is seeking a jury trial, and is seeking restitution of unpaid wages and attorneys’ fees. This wage and hour lawsuit was filed in February 2014, when the lead plaintiffs brought their grievances of their employer’s wage practices to the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency.

However, the plaintiffs reportedly did not receive any kind of reply from the agency within the cutoff point of 33 days, after which the employees could file the unpaid overtime lawsuit under state law. Since California’s labor division did not offer to prosecute Crabtree themselves within the required waiting period of 33 days, the plaintiffs were free to file the wage and hour lawsuit under state law.

The grievance letters were sent to the agency to fulfill a requirement under California’s Private Attorney General Act, which states that the affected employees must exhaust all administrative remedies before bringing filing their wage and hour class action lawsuits.

Overview of Wage and Hour Violations

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires that minimum wage employees be paid at least the federal minimum wage rate of $7.25 per hour for all hours worked, plus overtime pay at one-and-one-half times the regular rate of pay. This includes all non-discretionary bonuses, for all hours worked over 40 hours in a workweek. Many states have their own laws governing wage and hour requirements, but still must adhere to federal requirements.

Through the number of wage and hour lawsuits, law firms across the country have managed to collect a list of strategies that employers use to violate the federal wage and hour requirements, including:

• Forcing employees to work “off-the-clock”
• Refusing to pay overtime because employee did not obtain permission to work more hours
• Failing to pay workers for breaks lasting between five and 20 minutes, meal breaks, meetings, training sessions, take-home work, and some on-call time
• Misclassifying employees as “exempt”

The unpaid overtime lawsuit is Irina Eremina, et al. v. Crabtree & Evelyn Ltd., et al., Case No. BC544324, in the Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles.

Join a Free Unpaid Overtime Class Action Lawsuit Investigation

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. Learn more and obtain a free evaluation of your case to see if you’re eligible for back pay and other compensation at the Wage & Hour, Overtime Pay Class Action Lawsuit Investigation.