Ex-Employee Sues Holod’s Garden Center Over Allegedly Unlawful Wage Deductions

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A former employee of Holod’s Garden Center, Inc. has filed a proposed class and collective action against the company and two of its individual owners over alleged wage violations. The case argues that the plaintiff and similarly situated workers were deprived of their rightful earnings due to wage deductions for breaks they never took as well as the defendants’ alleged time-rounding practices. 

The plaintiff worked as an hourly associate at the defendants’ Holod’s True Value Home store in Pennsylvania from October 2017 to June 2018, the suit says. During this time, the complaint continues, the former employee worked 40 hours or more each week and had 30 minutes of pay automatically deducted from each day’s wages for a meal break, regardless of whether the man took a break. The plaintiff alleges that taking these half-hour breaks was “almost impossible” due to being assigned too much work, working during understaffed shifts, and being expected to prioritize work responsibilities over breaks.

The lawsuit takes further issue with the defendants’ alleged practice of rounding employees’ punch-in and punch-out times to the company’s benefit in order to reduce how much they pay their staff. For example, if workers punch in early or leave late, the defendants round down their hours to the time they were scheduled to arrive or leave without compensating them for the additional time they worked, the suit charges. On the other hand, if workers arrive a few minutes late for their shifts or leave a few minutes early, their time is allegedly rounded down to the nearest half-hour. As explained in the complaint:

“[I]f an Associate punches-in to start work more than four minutes late (i.e., 9:05 a.m. for a shift scheduled to start at 9:00 a.m.), his daily hours are rounded back to the next half-hour (i.e., 9:30 a.m.) and his pay is docked;”

As such, the case argues that “some or all of the wages” the employers allegedly owe the plaintiff and similarly situated employees whose hours were rounded down should be paid at their overtime rate.