A Guadalupe packaging company and its labor contractor agreed to pay nearly $6 million this week to settle a class-action overtime lawsuit. Apio Inc. and its labor contractor Pacific Harvest are the defendants.
The plaintiffs argued that Apio failed to pay employees for their full shifts. Rather, according to the plaintiff’s Oakland-based attorney Hector Martinez, the supervisors electronically scanned in workers by barcode when they arrived at their workstations, and scanned them out when they walked from one station to another. “They have a pretty sophisticated time system,” Martinez said. “It’s kind of interesting how they obtained their data.”
In addition, workers were also forced to “clock out” while they dressed in and undressed from protective gear, which is a violation of California labor laws, said Martinez, who is originally from Ventura. “If you do anything for the benefit of the employer, you must clock in first,” he said.