Walmart Hit with Class Action in California Over Alleged Post-Employment Wage Statement Missteps

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Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is the defendant in a proposed class action wherein the plaintiff claims the mega-retailer has consistently failed to remit all wages and vacation pay in a timely manner to employees upon their termination, among other alleged California labor law violations.

According to the plaintiff, who the suit notes was terminated by the defendant in mid-November 2018, Walmart’s policy is to devote “minimum resources” to its payroll accounting. This, the plaintiff argues, results in former employees routinely not being paid their final wages in a timely fashion. Further, the plaintiff says that when he eventually received his last wage statement, it lacked mandatory information, including dates of the pay period, all accumulated wages, and the name and legal address of the employer. Moreover, the plaintiff says Walmart has failed to provide proposed class members with proper wage statements when they received other tardy payments after their employment ended. All told, the plaintiff claims Walmart’s post-employment wage statement practices make it difficult for former employees to make heads or tails of whether they’ve been properly compensated.

“Defendant’s post-termination wage statements were confusing in that it was impossible to determine from the wage statements alone whether or not Aggrieved Employees were being paid wages or something else, such as a stock purchase refund,” the lawsuit reads. “The statements made it impossible for Aggrieved Employees to determine whether they had being [sic] properly compensated for all hours worked.”

The plaintiff goes on to allege he received no reporting time pay—wages for workdays on which an employee reported for work but finished less than half of a scheduled shift—for his final day of work.