Saputo Dairy Foods USA Failed to Pay Employees for All Hours Worked, Lawsuit Claims

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Saputo Dairy Foods USA, LLC faces a proposed collective and class action in which a former employee says she and other workers were not properly paid for all hours worked.

According to the case, employees at the defendant’s dairy milk product manufacturing locations were not paid for time they spent donning and doffing uniforms and protective gear and were frequently paid less than they should have received for their clocked hours.

As the suit tells it, the dairy producer “willfully, knowingly, purposefully, and recklessly” failed to pay workers for all time worked, including hours that would have qualified as overtime.

The plaintiff says she worked as a fill room operator at Saputo’s Delhi, New York location between March 2019 and July 2020. Per the complaint, the plaintiff was required to put on a uniform and protective gear, including a hair net, protective eyeglasses, a hard hat, a shirt, pants and rubber boots, before walking two minutes to her work location and clocking in for her shift. The plaintiff says the process of donning, and later doffing, her protective gear took between 15 and 20 minutes before and after each shift and went unpaid.

The case goes on to explain that the plaintiff and other workers were required to scan their fingerprints to record “the precise time” they clocked in and out of Saputo’s timekeeping system. On frequent occasions, the plaintiff noticed she was paid for fewer hours than what her clock-in/clock-out record revealed, the lawsuit says. Though the plaintiff complained to the human resources department and was told the mistakes would be corrected in subsequent paychecks, they rarely were, according to the suit. In fact, the suit says, the mistakes were so rarely corrected that the plaintiff was discouraged from making further complaints.

The lawsuit, alleging violations of both the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and New York Labor Law, claims Saputo’s pay practices affected numerous other job titles and positions, including forklift operators, UHT workers, laboratory workers, milk receivers, palletizers, liquefiers, rework workers and maintenance workers.

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