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December 7, 2011 – In another major victory for Southern California warehouse workers, a federal judge in Los Angeles today issued a preliminary injunction requiring five Inland Empire warehouse employers that service retail giant Wal-Mart immediately to begin complying with state and federal payroll recordkeeping and disclosure laws. Altshuler Berzon LLP is co-counsel for plaintiff warehouse workers.
Judge Snyder concluded, as she had in issuing the TRO, that the workers would suffer irreparable harm without immediate injunctive relief, while defendant employers would suffer no hardships other than those associated with bringing their recordkeeping procedures and paycheck information into compliance with state and federal requirements – which are costs that defendants should already be incurring. Although the Schneider defendants denied having any responsibility for the violations committed by the other companies, Judge Snyder concluded that Schneider’s contracts with the other companies demonstrate that Schneider “has substantial authority to control the terms and conditions under which plaintiffs are employed, [as those] contracts dictate nearly every material term of plaintiffs’ employment including how [Impact and Rogers] must conduct pre-employment screening and new employment training.” She also concluded that the contracts give Schneider “unilateral authority” to request that the other companies remove workers from its warehouses, which is a further indicator of their joint employer status. Given the substantial evidence in the record that defendants are still not in compliance with the TRO, which has been in effect for almost six weeks, Judge Snyder concluded that binding each defendant to the preliminary injunction was “necessary . . .to ensure compliance and to protect plaintiffs from irreparable harm.”
| Preliminary Injunction Order |