A Los Angeles County Superior court has ruled against GT’s Living Foods ordering the kombucha company to pay over $450,000 in restitution to eleven former employees in a civil case concerning labor violations like wage theft, worker abuse and retaliation.
The ruling, which was issued last Thursday, contends that GT’s Living Foods intentionally hired a vulnerable workforce of mainly immigrants from Central America – many with limited to no understanding of English – to work in dangerous conditions in its Vernon, California kombucha production facility. GT’s has been accused of failure to pay overtime compensation, failure to provide meal and rest periods, failure to pay wages upon termination and unlawful retaliation.
The court ruling marks the end of the first phase in a three-party trial representing a series of civil cases filed between September 2013 and November 2015; the plaintiffs will not be able to collect the restitution until the other two parts of the case are convened.
Factory employees at times worked 10- to 14-hour days and were forced to sign documents they could not understand – including falsified timesheets and illegal liability waivers – in order to receive their paychecks, according to the court document.
According to testimony, one worker “felt so oppressed by Defendant’s supervisors that he bought a pen camera” to the facility so he could secretly record his coworkers talking about the hours they worked and the inaccuracy of their pay.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, former employee Amancio Palacios said he was punished for suing the company over unfair working conditions by being shuffled between high heat areas and refrigerated areas of the factory, causing his sweat-drenched clothes to turn ice cold.
GT’s founder, CEO and CMO George Thomas “GT” Dave testified in his company’s defense saying that it had complied with all labor laws during the period in question. Yet, in a number of instances the court determined that the company did not provide evidentiary proof to contradict the claims.
In a post-trial hearing, Judge William Highberger, who presided over the case, said that Dave and VP and COO Ramon Cenak “lied through their teeth” and had “demonstrated a total absence of credibility in their testimony.”
The filing laid out a series of instances where GT’s failed to accurately log workers timesheets and, in some cases, some workers were not even listed in the company’s ADP payroll documents. At times, workers were paid overtime in cash envelopes along with a regular paycheck. The filing describes when Dave hand-wrote checks to existing employees for overtime pay after he was informed of a pending lawsuit over unpaid wages that had been filed.
The court also found that GT’s did provide credible evidence to refute claims that it willfully “hired workers that were not legally authorized to work in the United States to underpay, oppress, and abuse them.”
The court deemed that GT’s took advantage of a labor force that had limited opportunities due to their work status in the U.S. The court cited the high rate of worker attrition during the period, of the “372 non-exempt employees earning less than $10 an hour…more than 71% had separated from the company, with more than 86% of these terminated employees leaving within six months.”
Dave told BevNET in a statement that he was “saddened” by the ruling calling it “a shocker.”
“Our employees are the heartbeat of my Company and I would not have been able to grow my company over the course of 28 years if I mistreated or disrespected them,” he went on. “We disagree but accept the judge’s ruling and we will continue to maintain a position of kindness, compassion, respect, and gratitude for everyone we work with.”
Additionally, Dave told the Times, that “no evidence of retaliation of any kind was ever proven.”
The as-yet unscheduled second phase of the trial is expected to reconvene by the end of the year and will cover alleged labor code violations affecting the around 3,600 workers who were employed at the plant at some point since 2012. The second phase of the trial will address worker claims that GT’s “did not completely fix its wage and hour violations, and that unfair working conditions continue to the present day,” according to attorneys for the plaintiffs.