Santa Clara, CA: Merck is facing an employment class action lawsuit brought by 26 employees who allege the company has violated the Fair Labor Standards Act. Specifically, the lawsuit asserts Merck required the employees to work 45 minutes before their regular shift each day without pay.
The plaintiffs, all from New Jersey, are full time employees at Merck & Co, at its "pilot plant"at Rahway, New Jersey. They claim that the defendant company retaliated against them when they protested the unpaid work and threatened further retaliation if they asserted their rights under FLSA, the New Jersey Wage and Hour Law and the Conscientious Employee Protection Act.
In addition to the collective and class actions, each of the 26 workers is seeking to bring their own individual action against Merck. They allege they have all worked at the pilot plant since 2011, with some plaintiffs employment beginning in 1995. The lawsuit states the Merck was aware that requiring the plaintiffs to work an addition 45 minutes over their regular shifts was illegal but made them do it anyway.
"Defendants made statements to officials of the plaintiffs' collective bargaining representative and to certain plaintiffs who objected to the policy and practice of requiring uncompensated work to the effect that they understood the policy and practice to be unlawful but expected the plaintiffs and collective bargaining representative not to challenge it,"the complaint states.
Beginning in 2010 or earlier and continuing until at least October of this year, if not the present day, Merck required the pilot plant' RCOs to start work roughly 45 minutes before each regular shift and then required them to work their full eight hours, the plaintiffs said. During this uncompensated time, the RCOs performed work that is identical to the work they performed during their shifts, in essence doing the same job for an additional 45 minutes every, or almost every working day for no pay of any kind, the complaint states.
Further, the plaintiffs claim that Merck has failed to maintain an appropriate record of this work, and the records that do exist show only the eight-hour shifts, not the additional 45 minutes.
When the workers began protesting that this policy violated their rights, Merck retaliated by threatening to close the plant, to discipline the workers and other actions intended to discourage assertion of rights, the plaintiffs claim. Merck also imposed "onerous"new work rules, regulations and other conditions at the pilot plant with the intention of discouraging the plaintiffs from asserting their rights and punishing them for doing so.
The workers are represented by Matthew Pettigrew Jr., of Markowitz & Richman. The case is Reinhold, et al., v. Merck & Co. Inc., et al., case number 2:15-cv-08580, in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.
