Woodman’s Food Market, Inc. was sued Monday in the Northern District of Illinois by an employee who alleged that the grocery store chain for violating labor laws in connection with their compensation system.
According to the complaint, Woodman’s is a grocery store chain headquartered in Janesville, Wisconsin. The two plaintiffs are stockers at the company’s Carpentersville, Illinois location. One of the plaintiffs has worked at the store since 2008, the other since 2009. The putative class seeks to represent all nonexempt hourly store employees who worked at any point from Jaunary 23 to December 10 of this year.
A variety of class and collective groups are proposed in the complaint. For allegations under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the plaintiffs allege two collectives, one for victims of time-shaving, and others who earned a bonus during a workweek that they worked in excess of 40 hours. The plaintiffs argue that they and other potential plaintiffs were denied required pay through the rounding down of hours worked in the company’s electronic timekeeping system. They also allege that bonuses and other kinds of nontraditional compensation were not properly calculated in their overtime payments, in violation of the FLSA.
Three parallel state law classes are also identified in the complaint; two time-shaving classes under the Illinois Minimum Wage Law and the Illinois Wage Payment and Collection Act, and a third class under the minimum wage for those “who earned an Attendance Bonus, Employee Appreciation Holiday Bonus, or New Hire Bonus during a workweek in which they worked in excess of forty (40) hours.”
The plaintiffs are represented by Walcheske & Luzi.
