Lawsuit Alleges Coca-Cola Company Employees Underpaid Due to ‘Payroll Issues’

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The Coca-Cola Company faces a proposed collective action that claims employees were not paid in accordance with state and federal labor laws or provided with proper breaks.

Per the suit, company-wide payroll issues in 2019 resulted in workers not being paid for every hour worked and being paid for overtime hours at incorrect rates. Moreover, employees were not informed of their rights associated with breaks and deprived of 30-minute meal breaks and 10-minute rest periods as required under California law, the case alleges.

The plaintiff, a Southern California resident, says he worked for Coca-Cola for many years before payroll issues in 2019 caused him to be paid incorrect wages. Per the case, the issues were company-wide and persisted “for many months,” during which workers were incorrectly paid. The lawsuit says the plaintiff was paid on certain occasions many weeks after his wage payments were due while “some [payments] have yet to be made.”

According to the suit, Coca-Cola’s payroll issues stem from the company’s failure to employ sufficient resources for the payroll accounting function, causing “the inevitable result” that employees are not paid on time.

The case goes on to allege that Coca-Cola failed to provide workers with 30-minute breaks and 10-minute rest breaks in accordance with state regulations. More specifically, the suit says workers were required to take late meal breaks that occurred after their first five hours of work, denied second 30-minute meal breaks after working 10 hours, denied 10-minute rest breaks and deprived of one hour of pay at their regular rate for each day in which a proper meal break was not provided.

The lawsuit further alleges that workers were not timely paid proper time-and-a-half overtime wages when they worked more than eight hours a day, 40 hours a week or on seven consecutive days as required by California law.

“Both late payment and nonpayment of overtime wages for all hours worked violates the overtime wage statute,” the complaint contests.

Moreover, the wage statements provided to Coca-Cola workers were missing required information, including all applicable hourly rates in effect during the pay period, the corresponding number of hours worked at each rate and the dates for which the employee was being paid. The case claims Coca-Cola intentionally left out this information to the effect that employees were “subjected to confusion and deprived of information to which they were legally entitled.”

The lawsuit, which was recently removed from Los Angeles County Superior Court to California’s Central District Court, looks to cover non-exempt employees who worked for Coca-Cola at any time within the three years before the lawsuit was filed and until the opt-in notice is mailed.

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