A $12 million lawsuit has been settled and officially accepted in the latest call-in change lawsuit against Victoria s Secret shopping stores claiming that employees were never paid for their time while they were placed on call-in shift and told to stay away from work for several days. According to the lawsuit, this happened at least three times in 2021. The company is being sued by more than a dozen former and current employees for wages missed, vacation pay cut, and worse. The suit also says that the company did not properly train its employees on labor law, which is a violation of their rights.
The reasons that the company is being sued are what have brought the lawsuit to the point where it has reached a court hearing. According to witnesses at the hearing, a supervisor from the Victoria s Secret store in California told her employees that they would be placed on a “call-in” shift if they did not report to work on time. The supervisor also reportedly told the group that if they did not show up for work, they would be terminated. There were no reports of any employees who chose to report to work or to tell their supervisors that they were not reporting to work, according to witnesses at the hearing.
The lawsuit was then filed by a former employee who said that this was not the first time that this happened at Victoria Secret stores in California. She also claims that these types of policies are not even tolerated by other major clothing retailers. Many sales clerks at large chain stores tell their employees that they cannot take calls regarding missed shifts and cannot request that their shifts be moved to another day. Employees also tell the retailers that they cannot discuss or ask about their shifts with other customers, either.
In this case, two hours after these policies went into effect, a supervisor reportedly told a group of women working at the store that they could expect to be put on call-in shifts beginning the next week, if they did not report to work on time. One of the plaintiffs said that she reported to work on time the very next day, but was told by her supervisor that she could not work the second shift because she did not want to take the chance of being put on call-in shifts again. According to the plaintiffs, this is a clear violation of her right to be put on call-ins when she has not been paid for two hours of work. In this California labor laws class action lawsuit, the plaintiffs are asking for compensation for pain and suffering because they were repeatedly denied pay for two hours of work they did not receive.
Also known as the daily temperature law, this law requires larger employers to keep their establishments within a certain temperature range. For example, a business should have the employees’ restroom and changing areas that are cool or cold whenever possible. If an employee is required to use a public restroom, the employer must allow them to use the designated restroom for this reason only. Failure to comply with this requirement may result in monetary and/or disciplining penalties.
The lead plaintiff in this case, identified as Jane Doe, is a plaintiff that works as a full time lingerie retailer. She regularly makes trips to Target, BCBG Max Azaria, Victoria’s Secret, Gap, Dillards, JCPenney, Polo Ralph Lauren, Burlington Coat Factory, and Free1st, among other retail stores. She has worked for all of these companies for over twenty years without incident. On the day she began working at Target, however, Target told her that she could not change her shift location because the “air temperature was too low.”
