Another Class Action Suit Against Walmart Warehouse
In These Times
By Kari Lydersen
With Black Friday sales beginning Thanksgiving at 10 p.m., Walmart expects to bring in many millions in sales this week on the single most important shopping day of the year.
Meanwhile workers in Walmart’s warehouses in Chicago and southern California charge that the logistics companies contracted by the mega-retailer are nickel-and-diming them, shaving dollars off their hourly wages as temporary workers and obscuring the practice by failing to give them accurate pay stubs.
On November 19 the group Warehouse Workers for Justice helped workers file their fourth class action lawsuit since 2009 against companies that operate Walmart warehouses in the Chicago area.
This lawsuit charges that at least 18 workers at a warehouse in suburban Elwood realized once they were paid that they got less than promised and in fact less than minimum wage from the company Eclipse Advantage. This week workers marched to Eclipse offices demanding its billing and payment records so they can figure out exactly how much they are owed.
Shoddy record-keeping and incomplete or non-existent paystubs are a common complaint in the industry, where workers are often not even sure what company exactly they are working for and what their official pay rate is. The lawsuit also names Mid-West Temp Group Inc. Some workers were hired by Mid-West to work for Eclipse, others were hired directly by Eclipse. Multiple levels of subcontractors are another common facet of the warehousing industry.