Staples Hit with Another Overtime Lawsuit

This latest complaint, filed by former Staples employee Maraya Lumadue, says that workers also spent at least a few minutes daily working off-the-clock and another few minutes undergoing bag screening checks before clocking out. And that’s not all: Before they even clocked in, Staples required them help shoppers without being compensated. Lumadue estimates off-the-clock tasks took up to 21 minutes to complete, and there’s even more: nonexempt California employees were told to continue working 10 to 15 minutes to finish their tasks after clocking out.

The list of complaints goes on. Lumadue further complained that:

• Workers were also required to answer questions from the company, which would take 45 minutes each time, and they weren’t paid unless such tasks were completed outside their regular shift hours.
• Excess hours worked were not recorded or reflected on their wage statements.
• Employees were not compensated for supplies they had to buy to perform their job duties.
• Staples failed to provide workers with seats, which meant they had to stand for extended periods of time, even if the nature of their duties didn’t require them to remain standing.
• Staples failed to reimburse plaintiff and California employees for their uniform maintenance.
• Staples failed to reimburse its California employees for using their personal cell phones for the benefit of defendant.
• Staples routinely made plaintiff and its California employees wait in line for the timeclock to become available.

The case is Maraya Lumadue v. Staples the Office Superstore LLC, case number 2:25-cv-00028, in the US District Court for the Central District of California.

More Staples Wage Theft Complaints

Staples went down this same road last year. Fellow Staples employees Alissa Torres, Teri Weiser and Kristofer Giordani filed similar wage-and-hour class actions that has also been removed to federal court by Staples after initially being filed in Los Angeles Superior Court. (Staples told a California federal court that Weiser’s “boilerplate” wage complaint is a ‘copy cat‘ that includes “boilerplate” language and urged the judge to dismiss.) These lawsuits all claimed meal and rest break violations, along with similar wage and hour violations.

Staples has also been accused of wage theft through job misclassification. About ten years ago, Fred Wesson, a Staples general manager since 2004, claimed that more than half of the duties he routinely performs during his day are non-managerial in nature, and therefore do not qualify as exempt under overtime laws recognized in the state of California. That lawsuit is Fred Wesson et al. v. Staples Inc. et al., Case No. BC593889, in the Superior Court of the State of California, Los Angeles County.

In 2020, Staples settled a class action lawsuit over overtime pay and wage violations for $42 million. It involves several overtime wage and hour class action lawsuits related to the alleged misclassification of its assistant store managers with some cases going back to 2002 and involving more than 5,500 current and former employees.

In 2007, Staples paid $38 million in a settlement that claimed the company had misclassified assistant managers as exempt from overtime. A second, separate overtime lawsuit in 2010 set Staples back another $24 million for once again being accused of misclassifying assistant managers. However, in both prior cases, Staples did not admit any wrongdoing in either situation though they paid out hefty settlements, reported Top Class Actions. 

In 2015,  Staples delivery drivers filed an unpaid overtime class action lawsuit alleging they  were not paid for overtime hours worked while they waited for their trucks to be loaded at the beginning of their shift. While all drivers were told to arrive at a particular time, they were not paid until their trucks were loaded. This wait might have taken anywhere from 10 minutes to one hour. It all adds up to a huge settlement, and begs the question: When will Staples learn that it doesn’t pay to violate California labor laws?