Abercrombie & Fitch Facing Class Action for Alleged Failure to Provide Breaks, Proper Wages

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Abercrombie & Fitch Co., Abercrombie & Fitch Stores, Inc. and Hollister Co. are facing a proposed class action lawsuit for allegedly depriving employees of proper wages and mandated breaks at one of their California locations. 

According to the case, workers were frequently denied proper 30-minute uninterrupted lunch breaks due to insufficient staffing and failed to receive required 10-minute rest breaks for every four hours worked. Further, the suit claims the defendants instructed employees to perform off-the-clock work – for instance, making trips to the bank or picking up supplies for the store – before or after their scheduled shift start or end times. This work sometimes took upwards of an hour, the suit says, but employees allegedly went without pay because their shifts hadn’t officially started or had already ended. In fact, the lawsuit claims defendants would “round [employee] times to only reflect their scheduled start or end times.”

In addition, the complaint alleges that workers were occasionally forced to work overnight shifts of about 10 to 12 hours for which they were not paid time-and-a-half overtime wages or given the second meal period they were entitled to for a shift of that length.

The proposed class includes everyone who was employed by Abercrombie & Fitch in the state of California over the last four years. The proposed class action, which also names various subclasses, was originally filed in the Superior Court of California in the County of Orange, but the defense has requested it be removed to the United States District Court for the Central District of California.