Nike Hit with Class Action Over Alleged California Labor Law Violations

New to ClassAction.org? Read our Newswire Disclaimer

A proposed class action lawsuit claims Nike Retail Services, Inc. has violated California law by “regularly” failing to pay employees for the actual amounts of time they worked, inaccurately recording work hours, and denying required break periods.

Want to stay in the loop on class actions that matter to you? Sign up for ClassAction.org’s free weekly newsletter here.

The 52-page lawsuit accuses the retailer of a slew of alleged violations of California labor law, including the failure to pay proper minimum and overtime wages, accurately record work hours, distribute correct wage statements and provide required meal breaks and rest periods.

The suit also alleges Nike has underpaid employees for sick leave, neglected to reimburse workers for expenses incurred on their own dime, and—in the plaintiff’s case—discriminated against and wrongfully terminated an employee attempting to exercise her rights.

According to the case, Nike employees receive an hourly rate plus “incentive pay” when they meet certain performance goals. The complaint claims that when calculating an employee’s “regular rate” in order to pay overtime wages—which, by law, must be one-and-a-half times the regular rate—Nike has unlawfully excluded incentive pay from the equation. This inaccurate calculation has resulted in workers being underpaid for overtime hours, the filing argues.

Because of “rigorous work schedules,” Nike employees were sometimes denied a 30-minute off-duty meal break, which is required every five hours of a shift, the lawsuit shares. As the suit tells it, Nike occasionally compelled workers to “forfeit [their] meal breaks without additional compensation,” despite state law requirements.

Per the case, employees were also at times made to work more than four hours in a shift without receiving a 10-minute rest period, as required by law.

What’s more, the complaint contends that the defendant’s “established company policy” is to uniformly round off employees’ recorded hours, “always to the benefit of [Nike].” As a result, workers are paid less than if their recorded time reflected their accurate work hours.

Nike has also run afoul of California law by failing to provide employees with wage statements that showed accurate gross and net wages earned and correctly calculated total hours worked, the filing explains.

Further, the defendant is also alleged to have underpaid workers for sick leave. Rather than calculate sick pay at an employee’s regular rate, which was often increased by performance-based incentive wages, Nike merely determined sick pay by the worker’s base pay rate, the suit claims.

The plaintiff, an employee in California from January 2021 to December 2022, claims that Nike did not provide her with all of her legally required meal and rest breaks—nor was she compensated for them. Likewise, the woman did not receive proper minimum and overtime wages as an employee, the case describes.

Moreover, after reporting a supervisor for sexual harassment, the plaintiff was terminated by the company in 2022, the complaint says. The woman claims Nike discriminated against and wrongfully terminated her in retaliation for exercising her rights.

The lawsuit looks to represent any current or former Nike Retail Services employees in California, including any workers staffed by a third party, who are/were classified as non-exempt employees at any time since March 24, 2019.

Get class action lawsuit news sent to your inbox – sign up for ClassAction.org’s free weekly newsletter here.