California Class Action Suit Alleges Port Employers Shafted Workers Out of Sick Pay
Workers across 12 California ports have filed a class action suit against a host of terminal operators, container shipping firms and other maritime entities, alleging multiple violations of state and municipal labor codes in failing to provide both proper sick pay and Covid-19 pandemic-related “appreciation pay.”
The suit, filed in San Francisco County superior court, does not express a specific claim amount for damages, but the number exceeds $5 million in aggregate covering the individual members of the class action. The class action intends to recover sick pay wages, one-time pandemic wage payments, civil and statutory penalties and additional damages.
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Nine individuals are listed as plaintiffs in the complaint, titled “Hill et al v. Pacific Maritime Association et al.” The class action represents roughly 8,000 to 10,000 employees at the various ports
The 27 named defendants in the suit include the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA), Maersk, APM Terminals, Cosco Shipping, Yang Ming and SSA Terminals. More than 100 other unnamed firms were included in the class action filing.
In the complaint, the plaintiffs accuse the defendants of depriving thousands of employees in the both the state of California and in the city of Los Angeles of sick pay wages “for many years.”
“Defendants have failed to timely compensate employees with sick pay when they needed to take time off due to any reason set forth in Labor Code §246.5, including but not limited to ‘diagnosis, care, or treatment of an existing health condition of, or preventive care for, an employee or an employee’s family member [or] [f]or an employee who is a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking,’” the case said.
Additional allegations said that the defendants failed to maintain a policy that provided employees with paid time off work. The plaintiffs also said the plaintiffs did not keep records of sick pay hours, and neglected to account for those hours in employee pay stubs.
The plaintiffs also alleged that they, and “other aggrieved and similarly situated employees” made hundreds of requests to the defendants to pay their sick pay wages, with many later filing complaints with the California Labor Commissioner’s Division of Labor Standards Enforcement.
The class action complaint’s allegations surrounding the pandemic “appreciation pay” are related to a June 2023 agreement in which the PMA would divide $70 million among employees who continued to work throughout Covid-19.
According to the plaintiffs, the defendants claim that this pay specifically excluded all watchmen, who serve as security officers for the ports. The plaintiffs claim the exclusion was retaliation for the “hundreds” of watchmen who previously filed complaints with the California Labor Commissioner for sick pay.
“Because the acts and omissions taken toward [the] Plaintiffs and other similarly situated employees were carried out by managerial employee(s) acting in a deliberate, cold, callous, cruel and intentional manner, in conscious disregard of Plaintiffs’ and similarly situated employees’ rights and in order to injure and damage them, [the] Plaintiffs request that punitive damages be levied against Defendants and each of them, in sums in excess of the jurisdictional minimum of this court,” the suit said.
The defendants argue that the complaints should be disregarded, contending that the various local collective bargaining agreements in place across California’s ports can waive labor laws on sick leave.
Collectively, “one or more Defendants do not employ and have never employed any Plaintiff nor any of the individuals Plaintiffs claim to represent,” the rebuttal also noted.
A second overlapping class action complaint initially filed back in October 2019 against the PMA, the International Local Warehouse Union (ILWU) and its “Local 13” branch covering the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports was recently added to the “Hill et al v. Pacific Maritime Association et al” docket.
Backed by the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project, the suit alleges that six female non-union longshore workers became pregnant and were not given the accommodations to continue working, breastfeed at work or take time off.
As a result, that complaint alleges that the workers lost pay and the seniority needed to earn higher wages and, eventually, gain union membership, which would have granted them a full-time work schedule, improved wages, a pension and other health benefits.
The case argues that the way non-union laborers can rise up the ladder and become unionized is effectively discriminatory against pregnant women.
“The nearly 4,000 casual longshore workers at the LA/LB Port—of whom roughly 40 percent are women—occupy the very bottom rung of the docks’ hierarchy,” said the plaintiffs. “At the top are unionized longshore workers known as Class A workers, followed by registered workers, deemed Class B, at the next level. Women make up approximately 20 percent of Class A and Class B workers.”
