Rite Aid Hit With Wage & Hour Class Action Lawsuit

A California man has filed a wage and hour class action lawsuit against Rite Aid, alleging the company failed to pay employees for travel time, reimburse them for use of their personal phones and failed to pay overtime wages.

Plaintiff Roger S. works for Rite Aid as an Asset Protection Agent. An Asset Protection Agent’s duties are to watch for shoplifting and other criminal activity, apprehend the suspects, and detain them until law enforcement personnel can take over.

Rite Aid doesn’t have its Asset Protection Agents work at a single store but instead requires them to travel between their “home store” and other stores in the region in the course of a workday. Not until June 2014 did Rite Aid begin paying Asset Protection Agents for the time they spent traveling to stores other than their home store, according to the unpaid overtime class action lawsuit.

Furthermore, according to Roger’s wage and hour class action lawsuit, the extra time spent traveling sometimes increased employees’ work time to over eight hours in a single work day or over 40-hours in a work week. Rite Aid did not compensate these employees at the overtime rate for this extra work time, Roger says.

Roger is also seeking reimbursement for personal phone use that he says is required for the job. When Asset Protection Agents apprehend a criminal suspect, Rite Aid requires the agents to call law enforcement authorities. If the suspect is a minor, the agents are expected to also call his or her parent or guardian.

In practice, Roger alleges, agents rarely have access to store telephones while detaining a suspect and have no other option than to use their personal mobile phones. Rite Aid does not reimburse Asset Protection Agents for this use of their personal phones.

FLSA and California Employment Law

Roger’s wage and hour class action lawsuit raises claims under both federal and state law. Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, employees are entitled to be paid overtime wages for hours worked in excess of 40 hours in a given week. Roger alleges the extra time spent traveling to and from Rite Aid stores caused some employees to work over 40-hours per week, for which Rite Aid did not pay overtime wages.

In the same unpaid overtime class action lawsuit, Roger is bringing claims under California employment law as four distinct class actions, alleging one distinct class for each type of alleged violation.

California law gives workers additional protections beyond those provided under the FLSA. Under California employment law, any work hours in excess of eight hours in a given day should be compensated at the overtime rate. Roger claims the extra travel time caused some workers to work more than eight hours in a day without overtime wages. Roger also alleges Rite Aid’s failure to pay for travel time violates California minimum wage law.

California employment law also requires employers to document hours worked and to provide their employees with accurate and timely statements of those hours worked and the wages earned.

The law provides for a $50 penalty for the first violation of the wage statement requirement and $100 for each violation in a subsequent pay period, not to exceed a total of $4000 per claimant.

Roger claims in his wage and hour class action lawsuit that in failing to pay employees for travel time, Rite Aid also failed to provide them with timely and accurate wage statements.

Roger also claims that by effectively requiring employees to use their personal phones for work, Rite Aid violated California’s requirement to reimburse employees for expenses incurred in the course of carrying out the duties of their job. Finally, Roger asserts that all of the above actions also constitute violations of the California Unfair Competition Law.

On behalf of himself and the rest of the class members, Roger is seeking back pay, reimbursement of expenses, statutory and punitive damages, and attorneys’ fees.

The Rite Aid Wage and Hour Class Action Lawsuit is pending in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

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