Save Mart Wage Theft Class Action Lawsuit
On October 18, 2024, Cutter Law, with co-counsel at Fairchild & Levine, filed a class action lawsuit against The Save Mart Companies, detailing how the grocery store chain commits widespread wage theft and unfair labor practices affecting thousands of employees. Specifically, Save Mart misclassifies thousands of employees as exempt from overtime pay, leading to unpaid and underpaid wages.
The class action seeks to recover millions of dollars in unpaid wages, penalties, and other damages on behalf of the affected employees and aims to compel Save Mart to change its employment practices.
Why Are Employees Suing Save Mart?
According to the lawsuit, Save Mart intentionally misclassifies store managers and assistant managers as exempt from overtime laws. As a result, the overtime hours worked by these employees is effectively “free” for the store allowing Save Mart to decrease its costs and increase its profits at the expense of these employees. The purposeful misclassification of employees allows Save Mart to require workers to work long hours without breaks or overtime pay. Save Mart has a history of settling wage theft claims and continuing the same unlawful practices afterward.
The class action complaint was filed on October 18, 2024, in Stanislaus County Superior Court.
What Is Wage Theft?
Wage theft is a major problem that impacts millions of Americans each year, taking billions of dollars away from blue-collar workers and redistributing that wealth to multi-billion-dollar corporations. Wage theft occurs anytime an employer fails to pay workers the full wages to which they are legally entitled. One of the most common forms of wage theft occurs when employers improperly designate hourly employees as salaried workers who are exempt from overtime pay. This allows employers to require employees to work beyond 8 hours per day and 40 hours per week for no additional compensation–violating California’s overtime laws.
The Key to Wage Theft
“What Save Mart Companies really did here is they gave people these titles (of manager), they gave them a salary which allowed them to force those individuals to work more than 40 hours a week for no additional compensation.”
– Wes Griffith, Head of Consumer Class Action Litigation at Cutter Law
Who Is Eligible to Join the Save Mart Class Action?
Any current and former Save Mart store managers and assistant managers—including those who worked at other brands operated by Save Mart, such as Lucky and FoodMaxx—who worked at California stores within the last four years are eligible to join the class action.
If you’ve worked at Save Mart and believe you were underpaid or misclassified, contact us today to see if you qualify.
Store Managers and Assistant Managers
As detailed in the lawsuit, many Save Mart stores, managers and assistant managers were required to work 10-14 hours per day, six to seven days per week, spending most of their days on non-managerial tasks like bagging groceries, collecting carts, and stocking shelves. They were also forced to work without lunch or other required rest and meal breaks.
The outbreak of COVID and the resulting impacts on the economy only made these conditions worse, and beginning in March 2020, shortages in available hourly employees further forced managers and assistant managers to spend more and more of their time on non-management, hourly employee work
Joseph Christiansen’ Story - A Former Store Manager
“It was a whole family atmosphere up until it really wasn’t.” – Joseph Christiansen
Joseph Christiansen was first hired at Save Mart in October 2000 and worked at a Save Mart store for over 20 years. In 2007, Christiansen became an assistant manager and worked up the ranks to become a store manager in 2013. This title classified Christiansen as a salaried and overtime-exempt employee.
However, as time passed, Christiansen found himself spending more than half of each workday conducting hourly employee work, such as running cash registers, working the deli counter, and stocking shelves. Christiansen was regularly required to work 50-70 hours per week performing non-managerial tasks without lunch breaks or other required rest breaks. Save Mart exploited Christiansen’s work ethic and robbed him of countless hours of unpaid overtime.
“It was a very tough decision (to sue) because they were loyal to me for so long and I was rewarded, But at some point, around 2017, there were a lot of changes made to where there was no longer loyalty anymore,” said Christiansen.
Read Full Story: The Modesto Bee
“Rather than change how it operates its stores, Save Mart has continued its unlawful and exploitative business practices,” Mr. Griffith said. “Save Mart needs to be held accountable, and our lawsuit seeks to do exactly that.”
How to Join the Save Mart Class Action
The class action seeks to recover millions of dollars in unpaid wages, penalties, and other damages on behalf of current and former Save Mart employees. If you worked at Save Mart or its associated brands as a store manager or assistant manager within the past four years and believe you may have experienced wage theft or other unfair labor practices, contact Cutter Law today for a free consultation with our skilled team of class action lawyers. We will work quickly to evaluate your claim and determine whether you have grounds to join the class action lawsuit against Save Mart.
Save Mart lawsuit
“We’ve sued Save Mart at their corporate headquarters because we really view the violations as being directed from the top down. Save Mart has a reputation for being a local, family-run company. And that was true, until it wasn’t.”
– Wes Griffith, Head of Consumer Class Action Litigation at Cutter Law
News Coverage
Testimonials
