According to court documents, Maria Garcia worked for a year as a sales clerk at Hollister in one of the retailer’s Los Angeles stores. One aspect of her job - and those of other employees - involved being available for on-call shifts either scheduled in advance, or shifts for which employees were called in on a more impromptu basis.
According to Garcia’s California labor code lawsuit, employees were required to be available as part of their workweek for two kinds of on-call shifts: a scheduled stand-alone on-call, where employees would be required to either report to the workplace or at the very least call in to see if they were needed that day, or call-in shifts that could be scheduled either immediately before or after an employee’s regular shift.
In all situations, an employee would have to clear the day to be available for a call-in shift and were prevented from contacting the employer to see if the employee would be needed after all, prior to one hour before the scheduled start of their on-call shift.
Here’s where Garcia’s California labor lawsuit comes in: were an employee to report for a call-in shift, only to be told after the fact that the employee wasn’t needed after all, there was oft times no compensation for the employee for his or her time, or so it is alleged.
Garcia alleges such lack of compensation is a violation of California Labor Code and the California Unfair Competition Law.
“While employees must treat all call-in shifts as mandatory, defendant frequently does not allow employees to work a scheduled call-in shift, thereby depriving the employee of the opportunity to earn wages for the time they have made available to defendant,” Garcia says, in her complaint. “Regardless of how many days and hours employees are in fact permitted to work, employees are required to mold their lives around the possibility that they will work each and every call-in shift.”
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In addition to monetary compensation, Garcia and those similarly situated are seeking an injunction to force an end to the scheduling practice at Hollister - a decision made by other large retailers following an inquiry into the practice by the attorney general for the state of New York last spring. Garcia et al want Hollister to end the practice as well.
The California and labor law class action is Garcia v. Hollister Company, Case number 2:16-cv-00154, in the US District Court for the Central District of California.