Class Action: Amazon Owes Unpaid Wages for Sending New Hires Home Early Due to ‘E-Verify’ System Error

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Twenty-seven plaintiffs allege in a proposed class action that Amazon.com Services, Inc. failed to pay California employees reporting time wages, as well as provide suitable resting facilities, among other apparent labor law abuses.

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According to the lawsuit, which now resides in California’s Central District, Amazon.com Services conducts mass-hiring interviews, after which those hired are given a start date and instructions on where and when to show up. The plaintiffs, current and former hourly warehouse fulfillment center workers, claim many workers showed up to their first day of work expecting to work a full shift only to be flagged upon check-in as “ineligible to work” due to what the case calls a “failure to E-verify” error in the defendant’s computer system. The lawsuit alleges the error appeared even when employees had correctly filled out the appropriate I-9 documentation. “Dozens upon dozens” of new employees are consequently sent home without receiving at least the minimum reporting pay required under California’s Industrial Wage Commission’s Wage Order No. 2001-9, the lawsuit says.

The suit attributes the excessive number of false “failure to E-verify” flaggings of new hires to the Amazon.com Services’ apparent sluggishness in timely inputting and/or updating the workers’ requisite I-9 documentation.

Moreover, some proposed class members showed up to the defendant’s facilities and worked for only an hour or two before being sent home, the case says, with Amazon’s managers informing some that they could choose to work four hours of their regularly scheduled shift or voluntarily take the time off and go home. These workers, those who the complaint says “took [the defendant’s] manipulative bait” regarding voluntary time off and went home, were allegedly not paid mandatory reporting time pay to which they were entitled.

Further still, the lawsuit claims a substantial number of proposed class members clocked in 10 to 25 minutes prior to their scheduled shift start times in order to check daily assignments, retrieve product scanners, or perform other work-related tasks. Amazon.com Services has failed to pay this group of workers proper wages, including overtime, for this pre-shift work, the suit claims. 

The case goes on to pick at Amazon.com Service’s strict productivity quotas, noting that employees who fall to even 99-percent productivity are terminated. This item is wrapped into the defendant’s reported rest break policies, the suit says, in that employees’ productivity is often compromised or impeded by the locations of rest break areas and bathrooms. From the suit:

“Further, disadvantageous locations and an insufficient number of restrooms (such as at the one million square foot facility in Riverside, which alone houses over 1,000 employees), prohibit employees from getting an actual rest break, as they are required to trek as long as seven minutes to reach the nearest restroom and then seven minutes back to their work stations. Because it is Defendant’s policy that the production clock does not stop when employees need to use the restroom facilities, many of the Plaintiffs and Class Members have been forced to forego bathroom breaks completely, simply out of fear of termination.”

The inherent working conditions at Amazon have deprived proposed class members of proper rest break periods, according to the case. In that vein, the defendant, the plaintiffs allege, has allegedly failed to pay wages equal to one hour of pay at an employee’s regular rate of pay for each missed rest break. 

The complaint and notice of removal to California district court can be found below.

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