Articles Posted in Unfair Labor Practices

A new study by researchers at the University of California, Riverside reports on unfair and unsafe working conditions within the Inland warehouse industry.

Riverside Employment Attorney Houman Fakhimi understands that these allegations include a range of issues, including sleep deprivation that led to injuries, lack of appropriate training and constant pressure to work faster.

The study was recently published in the quarterly journal, Policy Matters.

The report indicates that about half of the warehouses’ workers are migrants, who in general face a greater level of exploitation than other employees because of their citizenship status and the fact that many do not speak English. According to the California Employment Development Department, nearly 115,000 people were hired in 2010 by the warehouses, and the majority of workers are Latino, mostly working temporary positions that pay poorly and lack benefits.

The study was conducted through a number of methods, including survey data, field research, secondary literature and a number of interviews with workers, managers and representatives of temporary employment service agencies.

Among the findings are that:

1. Nearly half of all workers felt they had endured pressure from their superiors that led to illness or injury. They indicated that work schedules often meant they were forced to do their job with very little sleep. This is a well-known contributing cause to workplace injuries.

2. Less than a quarter of workers believed they had received proper training in order to do their job safely. Some said they were simply left to figure it out on their own. What’s more, the vast majority said they felt pressure from their bosses to complete their tasks more quickly.

3. Funding to the Occupational Health and Safety Administration has meant diminished resources for workers and a lack of safety-protocol oversight.

The study also highlighted data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The agency reported that 4.5 percent of the nearly 2 million warehouse workers in the U.S. had suffered some sort of injury in 2009. About a quarter of a percent suffered some form of work-related illness.

What that means is that warehouse work is more treacherous than other danger-prone fields, such as mining, logging or construction. By comparison, about 3 percent of construction workers were hurt in 2009, and warehouse workers were about four times more likely as a construction worker to get sick from his or her work environment.

The study also indicates that more than half of the workers in 2011 either themselves got injured or sick from work or witnessed someone become ill or injured.

According to OSHA’s worker safety series on warehouses, the standards that were most frequently cited in warehouse safety issues included:

Improper stacking of products;

Unsafe use of a forklift;

Failure to follow proper procedure with lockout/tagout;

Failure to use proper personal protective equipment;

Repetitive motion injuries;

Inadequate provisions for fire safety.

The lead researcher on the study team was quoted as saying that both federal and state officials need to more closely monitor the working conditions of warehouse industry employees, and that retailers should be held accountable when their factory workers are subjected to unfair and potentially unsafe treatment.
Continue Reading

Two Los Angeles police officers were awarded $2 million after a jury determined the LAPD supervisors retaliated against the pair for complaining about meeting alleged traffic ticket quotas, according to the Los Angeles Times. The two previously rejected a $500,000 settlement.

The two veteran motorcycle officers of the department’s West Traffic Division claimed they were punished with bogus performance reviews after failing to meet citation quotas. The two sued the department back in 2009 accusing the department of harassment and using threats of reassignment and wrongful termination after they objected to demands from commanding officers. The officers were allegedly instructed to write a certain number of tickets and violations each day, which breaks state laws.

Our Orange County Employment Lawyers understand that while many types of employment positions are considered at-will — meaning either the employee or employer can terminate a working relationship at any time — employees are still protected against many forms of discrimination, including race, age and sex. In this case, the officers were ordered by their supervisors to issue a specific number of tickets per work day — something that is strictly against state law.

The determining factors between pushing your officers to increase productivity and setting an actual quota are fuzzy for field supervisors as they’re often under pressure to generate more citations. Still, employee positions cannot be threatened for not meeting department generated goals when those goals include illegal quotas.

Although the two claimed to be ranked against other officers based on the number of cars impounded and tickets issued, both violations of state law, the department denied in testimony that there had been any sort of instructed quota presented to the men. The defendants claim there must have been confusion over the difference of a “goal” and a “quota.”

In the end, 11 of the 12 jurors sided with the officers, agreeing that the failure to meet these quotas affected their careers after the two reported the misconduct and harassment of their supervisors.

“You can’t violate the law to enforce the law,” City Councilman Dennis Zine, a former LAPD motorcycle sergeant, said. “You can’t mandate the number of tickets.”
Continue Reading

The California Attorney General’s Office has filed an employment lawsuit in Los Angeles against eight car washed owned by the family that runs the trendy Koi restaurants popular with celebrities around the world.

Businessweek reports that the lawsuit accuses owners of the car washes of not paying the minimum wage, refusing rest and meal breaks to employees and forcing them to show up early or otherwise work without pay. It also says that employees who quit or were fired were not paid and others received bad checks.

Our Santa Ana employment lawyers handle cases against employers who refuse to pay employees money owed for time worked. Wage and hour disputes in Los Angeles are common and often result form an employee not being paid upon termination of the working relationship.

Employers must also abide by state and federal laws that require adequate time for meal and rest breaks. Additionally, an employer may not permit (let alone demand) that an employee work without pay. In some cases, the classification of an employee as a salary worker is done in an effort to avoid overtime. Frequently this is against the law and an experienced employment attorney in Los Angeles can assist you in seeking back wages.

The California Attorney General’s Office is seeking $6.6 million in the lawsuit against the 8 car washes after an investigation revealed a “widespread pattern of worker exploitation.”

“The owners routinely denied wages, breaks and overtime pay to workers at their unlicensed car washes,” the Attorney General said. “This lawsuit seeks to end this widespread pattern of worker exploitation.”

The car washes are in Fair Oaks, Folsom, Irvine, Laguna Hills, Laguna Niguel, Santa Monica, San Ramon and Venice. The five-month investigation interviewed more than 80 workers and found they were routinely denied minimum wage and overtime. False record keeping was used to cover up the violations.

The business also required employees to arrive hours early and be available unpaid until business picked up.

Here is the complaint, which was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.
Continue Reading