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Business Apr 01, 2023
| Photo courtesy of Mike Mozart/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
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A longtime Subway franchise cashier alleges in a new lawsuit that she and other workers have been denied compensation for meal and rest breaks, overtime and business expenses.
Deisy Villalta is the lead plaintiff in the proposed class-action Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit against Lacren LLC and other entities with headquarters based in the same Anaheim location and which operate at least 26 Subway franchise locations.
Villalta has worked as a cashier since 2011 at a location on West Slauson Avenue in Los Angeles, her suit states.
The proposed class consists of all of the nonexempt franchise employees who have been employed by the entities within the four years leading up to the filing of the lawsuit on Wednesday. A representative for Lacren and the other defendants could not be reached.
Villalta and the other proposed class members have such duties as opening and closing the kitchen, counting money in the cash register, making sandwiches and soup for patrons, taking out the trash and cleaning the location, according to the suit.
Understaffed shifts at the locations, combined with sudden influxes of customers, prevented many workers from taking their rest breaks on time or to miss them entirely, the suit alleges.
“Simply put, defendants had a practice to not provide rest breaks,” the suit states. “This rampant practice caused plaintiff and the (proposed) class members to remain on duty during rest breaks.”
Villalta was required to work outside her shifts and take supplies to different locations and also to provide store keys to employees at their homes so they could unlock the locations when they arrived at work, according to the suit.
The workers also were not paid the correct amount of overtime and were not fully reimbursed for business expenses, according to the suit, which further states that Villalta has not received a share of customer credit card tips since November 2020.
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