Class Action Claims Expedia, Classic Vacations Violated California Labor Laws

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Expedia and several related entities face a proposed class action that alleges California employees were not paid for every hour worked and denied proper meal and rest breaks, among other alleged violations of state labor laws.

The plaintiff claims to have worked for defendants Classic Vacations, LLC; Expedia, Inc.; Expedia Group; and Classic Custom Vacations at the companies’ San Jose offices without being paid for off-the-clock work performed before and after her scheduled shift. Moreover, the plaintiff alleges workers were not provided with uninterrupted meal and rest breaks and accurate wage statements as required under California law, and were not paid proper time-and-a-half overtime wages.

According to the lawsuit, the defendants were each listed as the plaintiff’s employer on her personnel file and employed similarly situated workers in their San Jose offices and facilities. The plaintiff claims she and other workers were not paid for time spent booting up their computers and working with the defendants’ clients before clocking in and after clocking out of the companies’ timekeeping system.

Further, the lawsuit alleges employees were often required to work during their 30-minute meal periods and 10-minute rest periods “to keep labor budgets low.” Per the suit, the employees were not provided with premium pay, i.e., an hour of pay at their regular rate, for each break they missed.

The case goes on to claim that workers were denied proper overtime wages when they worked more than eight hours in a day, or 40 in a week or for seven consecutive days, and double time wages when they worked more than 12 hours in a day or more than eight hours on their seventh consecutive day of work.

When workers did receive overtime pay, the defendants failed to include nondiscretionary commissions, incentive pay and nondiscretionary bonuses as part of their regular pay rates for the purpose of calculating their time-and-a-half overtime rates, the lawsuit alleges. Per the case, this practice also caused workers to be paid at a lower rate than required for sick pay and vacation pay.

According to the suit, workers were also not provided with timely, accurate and itemized wage statements due to the alleged aforementioned violations. More specifically, the lawsuit says the wage statements failed to accurately account for employees’ wages, overtime and premium pay and automatically deducted time for meal breaks regardless of whether the workers actually took breaks.

“The wage statements provided to Employees were confusing and required Employees to engage in discovery and refer to outside sources to verify whether their pay was correct and potentially resulting in a miscalculation by the Employees,” the complaint alleges.

Finally, the lawsuit alleges the defendants failed to reimburse workers for business expenses, such as cell phone usage, and failed to provide written contracts for commissioned employees that set forth the method by which their commissions would be calculated and paid.

Initially filed in Santa Clara County, California Superior Court on September 23, the case was removed to the state’s Northern District Court on October 27, 2021.

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