On Wednesday, two workers filed a collective action complaint in the Central District of California against PepsiCo, Inc., Naked Juice Co., and Tropicana Products, Inc. for allegedly failing to properly keep track of overtime hours worked by eligible employees and pay them the proper overtime rates after Kronos, a human resource technolgoy provider, was hacked in 2021.
Kronos is one of the world’s largest human resources companies that works with other companies to manage their timekeeping and payroll information, according to the complaint. They were hacked in December 2021, affecting businesses worldwide. As a result, Pepsi purportedly “did not pay their non-exempt hourly and salaried employees their full overtime premium for all overtime hours worked,” in violation of state and federal law.
The complaint described how Pepsi “issued paychecks based on their scheduled hours, or simply duplicated paychecks from pay periods prior to the Kronos hack” which has led to workers being paid “less than the hours they worked in the workweek, including overtime hours.” Furthermore, the pay rate was less than the full overtime premium rate, as they normally received.
The plaintiffs claimed that “Defendants simply paid based on estimates of time or pay, or based upon arbitrary calculations and considerations other than their actual hours worked and regular pay rates.” This comes down to a case of negligence, since Pepsi “could have instituted any number of methods to accurately track and timely pay their employees” yet chose not to. As a result, the defendants have supposedly violated the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and California wage laws such as the California Labor Code, Private Attorneys General Act and Unfair Competition Law.
The plaintiffs are seeking class certification, awards of unpaid wages, liquidated damages, and penalty damages, restitution, pre- and post-judgment interest, attorney’s fees and costs, and other relief.
The plaintiffs are represented by Parmet PC.
