CA Labor Commissioner Fines Warehouse Staffing Firms for Alleged Labor Violations
As our Riverside, California employment lawyer blog discussed in a recent post, last month, California State Labor Department investigators discovered staggering wage and hour violations at a giant warehouse that handles Wal-Mart goods. The investigators discovered that of two staffing agencies, supplying the temporary manual labor to the massive Mira Loma, California warehouse--operated by a Wal-mart-contractor, Schneider Logistics--failed to keep accurate records of how much money the low-wage workers were properly owed.
One staffing firm, Impact Logistics, Inc. was fined $499,000 for not properly providing itemized wage statements to the over 200 workers who load and unload Wal-Mart products into the warehouse facility. Impact was also issued a warning for neglecting to maintain time records.
Last week, California's Labor Commissioner, Julie A. Su, slapped the second staffing firm, Premiere Warehousing Ventures, with fines that total over $600,000--after state inspectors discovered that the staffing agency had engaged in multiple California wage and hour violations, including denying employees overtime compensation. According to the California Department of Industrial Relations (DIR), the company neglected to provide employees with proper wage statements, and failed to let them see their payroll records--as required by state and federal law.
According to Julie A. Su, California State Labor Commissioner, many workers also may not have received proper payment for all hours worked. Su claimed that the ever-increasing layers of subcontracting in warehouse work can make it difficult to enforce labor laws, especially when subcontractors make a deliberate effort to avoid labor compliance.