18th Annual Workplace Class Action Report - 2022 Edition

182 Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report: 2022 Edition purposes to his employment agency. SunPower argued that: (i) the Magistrate Judge misconstrued Oregon law, which led to misapplication of the class action requirements; and (ii) that whether SunPower was Plaintiff’s employer could not be resolved on a class-wide basis. As to SunPower’s argument that it was not Plaintiff’s employer, the Court noted that this was a legal argument unrelated to class certification, and that it declined to rule on the merits of the case at the certification stage. As to whether the issue of whether SunPower was Plaintiff’s employer could be resolved on a class-wide basis for all putative class members, the Court reasoned that the decision would relate to all employees, and therefore was appropriate for class-wide treatment. The Court reviewed the Magistrate Judge’s recommendation and found no err in applying Oregon law to the Rule 23 analysis, and thus it adopted the finding of the Magistrate Judge and granted class certification. Martinez-Sanchez, et al. v. Anthony Vineyards , 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 223396 (E.D. Cal. Nov. 18, 2021). Plaintiffs, a group of vineyard workers, filed a class action alleging that Defendant failed to pay for all the hours worked at the minimum wage or contract rate, failed to provide meal and rest breaks or failed to pay premium wages in lieu of the breaks, failed to reimburse them for needed tools that they purchased for the work, and failed to provide correct and timely itemized wage statements. Plaintiffs asserted that these practices violated the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act and California law. Plaintiffs filed a motion for class certification, which the Court granted in part and denied in part. In analyzing the motion, the Court specifically addressed the predominance requirement of Rule 23. With respect to Plaintiffs’ wage statement and recordkeeping claims, Plaintiffs asserted that Defendants were obligated to make, keep, and maintain accurate employment records and provide that information in itemized wage statements to Plaintiffs, which they failed to do. The Court ruled that the evidence demonstrated that common questions predominated over the class claims as to these issues, since Defendant maintained a uniform method of physically recording field worker schedule and production information in the form of dailies, which were filled out for each crew stating the total hours credited to field workers based on the common schedule for that day. Id . at *47. However, the Court noted that rather than showing the specific shift start, break, lunch, or shift end times for each employee, the times written were simply a reflection of the predetermined schedule applicable to all crews for the day. The recordings did not account for any time before the scheduled start time that workers were required to be present. The Court further determined that Plaintiffs’ evidence showed that workers were uniformly required to attend the training or school and to sign in on dailies prior to the shift start time and sign other sheets certifying their attendance at the training. Id . at *49. Further, the Court noted that any time workers stayed post-shift was not accounted for because the dailies were simply a reflection of the predetermined schedule. Id . at *49-50. The Court ruled that the evidence on the class certification record suggested that the common question of whether workers were required to work pre-shift and post-shift predominated over any individual issues. However, with respect to Plaintiffs’ meal and rest break claims, the Court opined that the evidence did not provide information on how many workers actually chose to take their meals and thus there was conflicting evidence requiring individualized questions. The Court reasoned that since Plaintiffs’ meal break claim lacked sufficient commonality and predominance, so did the rest break claim because the evidence did not establish that Defendant had a universal policy or practice of not authorizing or not providing 10-minute rest breaks for the entire class. The Court also determined that Plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that Defendants operated under a general practice of requiring workers to provide their own tools without reimbursement as a class-wide basis for liability. For these reasons, the Court granted class certification as to Plaintiffs’ wage statement and recordkeeping claims, and denied it as to the remainder of the claims. Meek, et al. v. SkyWest, Inc. , 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 187314 (N.D. Cal. Sept. 29, 2021). Plaintiffs, a group of airline employees, filed a class action alleging that Defendant violated various provisions of the California Labor Code. Plaintiffs filed a motion for class certification pursuant to Rule 23, which the Court granted in part and denied in part. Plaintiffs asserted that Defendant’s policy of only paying for scheduled hours led to grace period and meal and rest break violations. Plaintiffs sought to certify a class consisting of all hourly Frontline Employees who worked on the ground in California at any time from February 27, 2013 through October 18, 2020. Defendant did not contest that the proposed class was sufficiently numerous. However, Defendant argued that Plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that their claims were typical to those of the class, because they were only employed as ramp agents, and the proposed class consisted of 12 different job classifications. The Court rejected Defendant’s argument. It found that the evidence submitted sufficiently demonstrated that the proposed class members had the same or similar injuries that were based on the same course of conduct across the