The Future of Workers’ Rights

On April 1, 2022, workers voted convincingly to form a labor union at Amazon’s facility in Staten Island, New York. Amazon’s fight against unionization met its match, defeated not by well-funded external labor unions, but by a low-budget, independent group, the Amazon Labor Union (ALU). The ALU spent $120,000 on the campaign, raised through GoFundMe, defeating the trillion+-dollar Amazon empire’s push to suppress worker organizing. The company spent $4.3 million in 2021 alone on anti-union consultants to help keep its 1.1 million workers disorganized and disempowered.

The workers voted 2,654 to 2,131 in favor of creating the ALU, the first-ever Amazon union. The darkhorse victory grew out of the determination, courage and conviction demonstrated by Christian Smalls and Derrick Palmer, who had worked at the facility, and whose authenticity resonated during the 11-month-long union campaign. In the spring of 2020, after learning organizing efforts were underway in their New York City warehouses, Amazon launched a smear campaign against the organizing lead, Smalls. Amazon General Counsel David Zapolsky questioned Small’s street-casual demeanor and called him “not smart, or articulate” – unfounded stereotypes which reveal thinly-veiled racism exhibited by the Amazon executive team. Amazon attempted to silence Smalls by firing him in 2020 after he led a walkout to protest COVID-related health and safety issues.

The termination sparked something in Smalls, and he and his partner, Derrick Palmer, began their union campaign in earnest in early 2021. Concurrently, Amazon ran two major campaigns against unionizing efforts in Alabama and New York City. Amazon paid anti-union consultants $3,200 per day, each, to host mandatory meetings for captive audiences of employees, and one-on-one meetings with workers to turn them against the union organizing efforts. The mandatory meetings were typically led by Amazon managers who delivered scripted anti-union speeches and slideshows, but the efforts backfired, when contrasted with Smalls’ grassroots approach.

Smalls organized workers by waiting at a Staten Island MTA bus stop that brings workers to and from the LDJ5 Amazon sorting center and the JFK8 fulfillment center. Smalls would wait at the MTA bus stop for hours at a time, days on end – even after being arrested and accused of trespassing and resisting arrest on Amazon property. The bus stop outside the warehouse became a place of refuge for workers to enjoy Palmer’s homemade baked ziti, empanadas, and West African rice dishes alongside a makeshift bonfire to warm colleagues waiting for the bus in the cold. Meantime, Smalls and his team used unconventional organizing methods such as Twitter and TikTok to raise money, recruit legal representation, and gain supporters.

The momentous victory of the ALU is especially important in the light of the drastic decline in union membership in the U.S., which fell from 20% in 1983 to 10.3% in 2021. Early unions’ intentions were to raise wages obtain basic worker protections, and level the playing field. In fact, many of today’s employment laws would not exist had workers not unionized. However, despite these great ideals, anti-union campaigns and the unfortunate reproduction of bias within some unions have been barriers to progress. Gradually, as unions became more institutionalized, many workers began to feel suspicious of them. Amazon warehouse workers in Staten Island, the majority of whom are young, Black, Latino, working class and urban, may not have felt that established unions spoke for them.

Smalls, a 33-year-old Black man operating independently, and his ALU, stepped into this void. When asked about traditional unions, Smalls said he felt that established unions were “disconnected” from innovative styles of organizing. To emphasize his point, Smalls camped out at the MTA bus stop for 10 months as union president. The ALU’s innovative use of scrappy resources such as social media, the MTA bus stop, and makeshift advertisements made with tape and cardboard, may be revealing a new era in workers’ rights. In the envisioned new era, leadership takes nontraditional forms, where union presidents come from diverse backgrounds and socioeconomic statuses, and organizing methods are no longer restricted to well-staffed offices and dues-financed operations. Smalls, with his collection of tattoos, gold grills, and former career as a rap singer, may be the future of labor unions in America, an outsider to mainstream power structures driven only by his passion to make people’s working conditions better. 

Undoubtedly, advocating for your rights in the workplace is a terrifying endeavor, especially against a giant like Amazon, but by harnessing the strength of community, Smalls was not alone. What Smalls and his team have shown is that this source of strength, plus some clever grassroots labor organizing, can fell giants.

Bryan Schwartz Law stands unwaveringly with workers in advocating for their rights. When such rights are violated, Bryan Schwartz Law will empower workers to fight back. If you feel that your employer has compromised your rights in the workplace, including your right to concerted action with your co-workers, reach out to us here.

The California Supreme Court Holds PAGA Representative Plaintiffs are Entitled to Robust Discovery

Today, the California Supreme Court issued an important decision, holding that workers prosecuting wage violations under California’s Private Attorneys General Act of 2004 (“PAGA”) are entitled to receive witnesses’/class members’ contact information without having to prove their entire case first. As explained in Williams v. Superior Court (Marshalls of CA), “California law has long made clear that to require a party to supply proof of any claims or defenses as a condition of discovery in support of those claims or defenses is to place the cart before the horse.”[1] The entire decision is required reading for any wage and hour and/or class action practitioner in California, but a few points are worth highlighting here.

I.            PAGA Plaintiffs Are Not Required to Prove the Merits of Their Case Before Receiving State-wide Contact Information for Witnesses/Potential Class Members.

For California employees, the biggest win from the Williams decision is the California Supreme Court’s holding that a worker bringing a representative PAGA enforcement action, like any other plaintiff in a civil state court lawsuit, is not required to prove their case before receiving the information and documents needed to prove their case on behalf of themselves and their co-workers.

The outcome in Williams flows from a plain reading of PAGA and California’s discovery statute, neither of which impose the “modicum of substantial proof” standard MarshallsCA advanced, i.e., “a PAGA-specific heightened proof standard at the threshold, before discovery.”[2] To the contrary, “to insert such a requirement into PAGA would undercut the clear legislative purposes the act was designed to serve” because it would necessarily undermine a representative plaintiff’s ability “to advance the state‘s public policy of affording employees workplaces free of Labor Code violations, notwithstanding the inability of state agencies to monitor every employer or industry.”[3]

Of course, a trial court retains discretion for a “special reason to limit or postpone a representative plaintiff‘s access to contact information for those he or she seeks to represent, but the default position is that such information is within the proper scope of discovery, an essential first step to prosecution of any representative action.”[4]

II.             High Court Reaffirms the Broad Scope of Discovery in California.

The California Supreme Court also used the Williams case to reaffirm the broad scope of civil discovery in California state court. While broad discovery requests may result in “a defendant’s inevitable annoyance,” the Court recognized that the California Legislature “granted such a right anyway, comfortable in the conclusion that ―[m]utual knowledge of all the relevant facts gathered by both parties is essential to proper litigation.”[5]

The Court also clarified that the three-step framework established in Hill v. National Collegiate Athletic Assn.[6], not the “compelling interest” analysis in White v. Davis, should be applied to resolve most parties’ privacy objections to discovery requests unless a request constitutes an “obvious invasion[] of interests fundamental to personal autonomy.”[7] The Court made clear that routine requests for witnesses’/class members’ contact information typically do not warrant “compelling interest” scrutiny, and strongly implied that the Hill test should frequently result in the production of witness/class member contact information, particularly where the parties agree to use a Belaire-West notice and opt-out process.[8]

III.            Defendants Asserting “Burden” Objections to Discovery Requests Must Provide Specific Facts About the Cost and/or Administrative Difficulty of Complying.

The Court also underscored that a defendant may not refuse to produce discovery merely because a defendant disagrees with a plaintiff’s legal theory. In so holding, the Court emphasized that “the way to raise” a perceived legal deficiency in a plaintiff’s case “is to plead it as an affirmative defense, and thereafter to bring a motion for summary adjudication or summary judgment, not resist discovery until a plaintiff proves he or she” can overcome the defendant’s affirmative defense.[9] This aspect of the Williams decision will hopefully go a long way towards incentivizing defendants to defend against plaintiffs’ claims on the merits instead of engaging in discovery gamesmanship, typically resulting in unnecessary and costly motion practice.

Moreover, if responding to a discovery request poses a genuine burden for a company, then the company must provide “evidence of the time and cost required to respond” to support its burden objection.[10] While unsurprising, this portion of the opinion should be used by workers’ advocates who receive generalized “burden” objections from defendants which lack any specific facts regarding the nature of the supposed burden to respond. 

In Williams, the Court illustrated its point with an example: “depending on the nature of any computer database Marshalls might maintain, providing information for 10,000 employees might prove little different than for 1,000, or 100.” If Marshalls had shown that, for example, each store had its own computer database of employees’ information unconnected to any other store’s database and no other centralized employee database existed, then the company might have had solid grounds to assert that coordinating data retrieval between “approximately 130 stores” in California would have been too costly and time-consuming.[11] In that case, the trial court might have ordered cost sharing between the parties, or a narrower production of information.[12] On the other hand, if Marshalls had been able to produce contact information relatively easily regardless of whether it produced employee information for one store as opposed to all of its stores, then Marshalls’ burden objection likely would not have been sustained. 

In the actual case, Marshalls provided no “supporting evidence” regarding the nature of the “time and cost required to” produce contact information for the witnesses/potential class members.[13] Accordingly, the company’s “burden” argument lacked any legal merit.[14]

IV.            Conclusion

Williams will be cited by wage and hour practitioners for years to come because it both provides much needed clarification regarding the scope and operation of California’s civil discovery rules as applied to PAGA representative actions, and also affirms the common sense principle that a worker should not have to prove his or her case before receiving the basic information he or she needs to do so.

Workers and workers' advocates should celebrate this tremendous victory weighing in favor of access to justice, and ultimately, robust enforcement of California’s vital labor laws.

***

If you have believe that you and your co-workers are or have been subject to unlawful pay practices, then please contact Bryan Schwartz Law.

---

[1] Williams v. S.C. (Marshalls of CA), No. S227228, 2017 WL 2980258, slip op. at 20 (Cal. July 13, 2017) (“Williams”)

[2] Williams slip op. at 12, 14.

[3] Williams slip op. at 13.

[4] Williams slip op. 11.

[5] Williams slip op. at 20.

[6] 7 Cal. 4th 1, 35. (1994).

[7] Williams slip op. at 29.

[8] Williams slip op. at 25-29.

[9] Williams slip op. at 31 (citing Union Mut. Life Ins. Co. v. Superior Court, 80 Cal. App. 3d 1, 12 (1978)).

[10] Williams slip op. at 18 n. 6.

[11] Williams slip op. at 4.

[12] Williams slip op. at 18 n. 5.

[13] Williams slip op. at 18.

[14] Williams slip op. at 19 (citing Sinaiko Healthcare Consulting, Inc. v. Pacific Healthcare Consultants, 148 Cal. App. 4th 390, 402 (2007)).

Defeating Chindarah v. Pick Up Stix Releases

California employers sometimes seek to nip wage and hour class actions in the bud by buying off individual class members for nominal payments. At least one poorly-reasoned California appellate decision, Chindarah v. Pick Up Stix, 171 Cal. App. 4th 796 (2009), seems to permit it. In a recent independent contractor misclassification class action brought by Bryan Schwartz Law, Marino v. CAcafe, the primary defendant tried just such a tactic, mere weeks after the case was filed late last year. The corporate manager asked each employee-former employee to sign a release based upon a supposed “restructuring” but failed to disclose the existence of the workers’ just-filed lawsuit. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California issued a strongly-worded opinion, invalidating all releases improperly obtained from putative class members by the defendants, despite Chindarah, and ordering related relief because the employer’s “communications with the putative class members concealed material information and were misleading.” Marino v. CAcafe, Inc. et al., Case No. 4:16-cv-06291-YGR, slip op. at 3 (filed Apr. 28, 2017) (full opinion available here).

The court explained that “[w]hile the evidence does not indicate the high degree of coercion present in other cases, the fact remains that [the defendants] communicated with putative class members after the lawsuit was filed, but before they had received any formal notice and before plaintiff’s counsel had been given an opportunity to communicate with them.” Id. at 3. Importantly, the defendants’ “communications did not inform putative class members that there was a lawsuit pending that concerned their legal rights, the nature of the claims, plaintiff’s counsel’s contact information, the status of the case, or any other information that might have permitted them to allow them to make an informed decision about the waiver of their rights.” Id. at 4. This conduct “undermine[d] the purposes of Rule 23 and require[d] curative action by the court.” Id. at 3. To correct the harmful effects of defendants’ improper communications, the court:

·     invalidated all releases obtained from putative class members,

·     prohibited the defendants from requesting any reimbursement of payments made,

·    ordered curative notice be issued to all putative class members regarding their rights and the court’s intervention on their behalf (paid for by the defendants),

·    enjoined the defendants responsible for making the communications from engaging in any further ex parte communications with putative class members regarding the litigation or any release of claims until the court has the opportunity to rule on the issue of conditional certification of the FLSA collective action, and

·   ruled that class members who signed releases in exchange for payments could keep those payments, regardless of the outcome of the case.

Id. at 5.

Workers’ advocates should not hesitate to bring motions for corrective action when defendants attempt to subvert the rights of workers and Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 (governing class actions) by embarking on a Chindarah campaign. A court need not find a high degree of coercive conduct on the part of an employer to warrant invalidation of releases obtained from putative class members. If the employer uses misleading tactics to obtain releases from putative class action members – like omitting the fact that a class action has been filed against the defendant for wage violations, and failing to disclose contact information of the plaintiffs’ lawyers – then you may have strong grounds to remedy the defendant’s misconduct. See generally Gulf Oil Co. v. Bernard, 452 U.S. 89 (1981); Retiree Support Grp. of Contra Costa Cty. v. Contra Costa Cty., 2016 WL 4080294, at *6 (N.D. Cal. July 29, 2016) (collecting 8 cases).

Contact Bryan Schwartz Law with any questions about questionable releases of wage and hour claims.

Ninth Circuit Allows CA Wage and Hour Class Action to Move Forward, Affirming the District Court's Grant of Class Certification

The Ninth Circuit recently affirmed the District Court’s certification of a wage and hour class action against Stoneledge Furniture, a wholly owned subsidiary of Ashley Furniture Industries. 

Stoneledge Furniture operates 14 retail furniture stores in California and employs about 600 sales associates, who primarily sell furniture and accessories to Stoneledge’s customers. Stoneledge paid its sales associates on commission.

Plaintiff Ricardo Vaquero, a former sales associate of Stoneledge, asserts that Stoneledge violates California’s minimum wage and hour laws because it requires sales associates to do many tasks unrelated to sales.   Vaquero alleges that Stoneledge requires sales associates to clean the store, attend meetings, and carry furniture.   According to Vaquero, Stoneledge does not pay its sales associates for such work, beyond what they earn in commissions, and this policy violates California wage and hour laws.

Under the Class Action Fairness Act  of  2005,  28  U.S.C.  § 1332(d)(2), Defendants removed the case to federal court, and Vaquero moved to be named a class representative.   He asked to represent four subclasses, three of which were derivative of the  first:    (1)  a  class  of  all  California  sales  associates employed from August 24, 2008, to the present who were paid less than minimum wage for non-sales time worked; (2) sales associates who were not provided with itemized wage statements; (3) former sales associates who were not paid all wages due at separation; and (4) sales associates who were  subject  to  unlawful  business  practices.

The district court granted class certification for all of the classes except for the third subclass. 

Defendant Ashley Furniture moved to appeal the district court’s decision to certify the remaining subclasses pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(f). The sole issue before the court is whether the district court properly granted class certification.

Defendants argued that Vaquero failed to meet the requirements of Rule23(a), alleging that Plaintiffs failed to establish commonality and predominance of class claims among the class.  Defendants also asserted that class certification altered the parties’ substantive rights in violation of the Rules Enabling Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2072(b).

 

Defendants relied on Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, arguing that commonality did not exist among the class.  However, the court disagreed, distinguishing Dukes from the present case.  Dukes involved a class action against Walmart for sex discrimination, alleging that the corporate culture and the retailer’s delegation of promotion decision to individual managers denied a class of female employees equal pay and promotional opportunities in violation of Title VII.  The Supreme Court held that subjective decision by many managers in different locations could not be considered a common injury across a class of more than one million plaintiffs.

 

Unlike in Dukes, the Ninth Circuit found that the class in Vaquero had commonality because the class all had the common contention that Defendant’s compensation structure violated California’s minimum wage laws for all such employees, a relatively small number of class members who all generally performed the same work.

 

Defendants also argued that Vaquero’s class failed to establish predominance, asserting that predominance cannot be reached when damage calculations cannot be performed on a class-wide basis. Defendant’s based their argument on Comcast Corp. v. Behrend, an antitrust case where the Supreme Court reviewed certification of a class of consumers that offered a complex damages model to show how customers were subject to anti-competitive pricing.

 

The Ninth Circuit has interpreted Comcast to mean that plaintiffs must be able to show that damages resulted from the Defendant’s conduct in order to establish predominance.  The Ninth Circuit found that Vaquero easily established predominance because the class alleges that Defendant’s consciously chosen compensation policy deprived the class of earnings in violation of California minimum wage laws.  The court also held that the Vaquero class’s inability to prove individual damages cannot alone defeat class certification and held that the permissibility of using representative or statistical models to establish damages turns not on the form a proceeding takes—be it a class or individual action—but on the degree to which the evidence is reliable in proving or disapproving the elements of the cause of action.

 

Defendants also argued—relying heavily again on Dukes—that allowing the class to use representative evidence to prove damages would inevitably change the substantive rights of the parties by preventing Defendants from individually cross-examining and challenging each class member’s claim.  In Dukes, the Supreme Court rejected plaintiffs’ trial plan to determine damages through statistical sampling because Wal-Mart would lose the right to litigate its statutory defenses to individual claims.

However, the Ninth Circuit found Ashley Furniture’s reliance on Dukes misplaced.  The court found that Defendants’ concerns about damages were hypothetical at this stage of the litigation and that the district court’s grant of class certification did not expand Vaquero’s substantive rights or those of the class. The court explained that Defendants could challenge the viability of Vaquero’s evidence at a later stage of the proceedings and that it was immature to decide at the stage of class certification.

High Court Affirms Workers’ Right to Prove Mass Wage Theft Cases With Statistical Evidence

Today, the United States Supreme Court affirmed a basic principal underlying lawsuits challenging mass wage theft – if employers fail to keep records of employees’ work, then employees get to use their best estimate to prove their employer’s wage theft, including estimates based on statistical and representative evidence. The Court also confirmed that representative evidence may be used beyond the wage and hour context.

As we wrote here, the Court seemed unpersuaded at oral argument last fall that it should overrule seventy years of precedent, first established in Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co., that employees may use a “representative sample to fill an evidentiary gap created by the employer’s failure to keep adequate records.” Tyson Foods, Inc. v. Bouaphakeo, No. 14-1146, 2016 WL 1092414, at *9 (Mar. 22, 2016). Writing for a 6-2 majority, Justice Kennedy affirmed this long-standing and critical rule of law.

Importantly, the Court went beyond the lenient standard of proof established in Mt. Clemens, which is unique to the Fair Labor Standards Act context, and thereby confirmed that representative evidence can be used as common proof of classwide liability and damages in other legal contexts. In particular, the Court clarified that Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., v. Dukes, the infamous decision that struck down a nationwide gender discrimination class action and has been the cause of much consternation for worker and consumer advocates, “does not stand for the broad proposition that a representative sample is an impermissible means of establishing classwide liability.” Id. at *10. Instead, the Court correctly recognized that representative evidence, like any evidence, can be persuasive or unpersuasive to a jury depending “on the purpose for which the sample is being introduced and on the underlying cause of action.” Id. at *8. In cases where “each class member could have relied on that sample to establish liability if he or she had brought an individual action,” representative evidence is more appropriate in contrast to cases where affected individuals are not sufficiently “similarly situated.” Id. at *8, *11. Thus, any doubt about the propriety of representative evidence to prove classwide liability in the wake of Wal-Mart and Comcast Corp. v. Behrend has been dispelled. The new battleground appears to be not if, but when representative evidence can be deployed to establish an element of a cause of action on a classwide basis. Id. at *8.

Interestingly, the Court observed that the district court would have erred in denying class certification if its sole basis for denying class certification were the lower court’s perception of the expert report as unpersuasive. Id. at *11. Only if the lower court “concluded that no reasonable juror could have believed that the employees spent roughly equal time donning and doffing” would denying class certification have been proper. Id. See also Amgen Inc. v. Connecticut Ret. Plans & Trust Funds, 133 S. Ct. 1184, 1194-95 (2013) (“Rule 23 grants courts no license to engage in free-ranging merits inquiries at the certification stage.”) The takeaway appears to be that the Court will require aggrieved plaintiffs seeking to use representative evidence to first establish that they were “similarly situated” such that the defendant’s harmful conduct affected them “roughly” in the same way. Id. However, once this threshold is met, the representative evidence may be used to establish classwide liability if it is otherwise admissible – no “Trial by Formula” concerns in sight.

Also, as anticipated by comments at oral argument, the Court declined to consider the important question of whether the possibility of uninjured class members prevents a district court from certifying a class action because Defendants abandoned the issue. The district court will have to address this issue in the first instance on remand. If not addressed in this case, the issue of possibly uninjured class members likely will continue to be raised by employers seeking to avoid accountability for their wrongdoing by arguing that if they didn’t steal from each of its employees, then its victims cannot stand together because unaffected employees might possibly receive a windfall. Thus, the employer should be let off the hook, or so the defense bar’s argument goes. A patently ridiculous argument, but one that will be resolved another day. 

            Lastly, the Court cautions that any representative evidence that relies upon expert witnesses, sampling, and similar evidence remains subject to a Daubert challenge, and thus, must be methodologically sound. This is in line with California Supreme Court jurisprudence that a class action may be certified using representative evidence, but the methodology behind the representative evidence must be credible and free of defects such as sampling errors. See Duran v. U.S. Bank Nat. Assn., 59 Cal. 4th 1, 13, 50-8 (2014) (Liu, J., concurring). See also here and here for discussion of the holding in Duran, and issues relating to the use of representative proof to advance the cause of workers.

            Thus, Tyson Foods, far from spelling the end of representative evidence in class actions, has breathed new life into class actions used to protect the interests of consumers, workers, and the general public.