Workers Accuse Target of Labor Violations, and it Faces a Boycott

Albany, NYTarget was slammed with a class action complaint last month alleging New York Labor law violations. The wage-and-hour complaint claims Target failed to pay its workers for time spent walking to and from their clock-in/clock-out stations and assigned departments. Plaintiffs say they walk up to half a mile inside the enormous warehouses, which can take up to 10 minutes. Minutes add up, particularly when it spills into overtime. Adding to Target’s woes, as of today it faces a boycott, called #TargetFast.

Workers Accuse Target of Labor Violations, and it Faces a Boycott Plaintiffs Jeanna Kratzert and Neil Mosher filed the wage-and-hour class action in New York Northern District Court on behalf of approximately 2,000 current hourly employees at Wilton and Amsterdam, NY warehouse-distribution centers, which are about 1.5 million and 1.8 million square feet, respectively. And walking up to half a mile to clock in and out could cost each employee about $1,000 – $2,000 yearly, according to Law360. That tallies up to about $2 million annually in unpaid wages. Plaintiffs are seeking compensation for unpaid minimum wages, overtime and promised wages, plus liquidated damages for violations dating back to January 2019. Kratzert is a former warehouse worker at Wilton, where she was as a packer and member of the inbound and outbound departments from April 2018 to November 2024. She said in the complaint that her mandatory pre-shift walking time took about eight to 10 minutes per day. Mosher is employed in the Wilton warehouse’s shipping department, and said it takes him five to six minutes walking to his assigned time clock area before starting his shift.

A Typical Day

Target warehouse employees’ work is “intense and physically demanding,” states court documents. First, workers are required to swipe in at the entrance to the warehouse. After passing a security checkpoint staffed by security guards, they walk the long distance to their assigned work locations and then clock in. However, they must be at their assigned work locations for “start-up meetings” with their supervisors several minutes before their shift begins. And Target “encouraged” warehouse employees to clock in for their shift up to ten minutes early in order to be set up and on-site at their start-up locations at the start of their shift – but they weren’t paid for this extra time.

For example, your shift starts at 6 am, but you clock in at 5:50 am. (If you arrived at the warehouse entrance at 6 am, you are late for your shift and penalized.) You clock out at the end of your shift at the time clock located closest to your assigned work location, which is half-a-mile back to the security checkpoint before leaving. Add several few more minutes for sporadic bag checks (see below), where you join long lineups.

Walking Time Overtime

Walking time adds up. Krartzert said that in one pay period, she was paid for 14.1 hours of overtime at a rate of $25.11 per hour. But she is owed wages for that mandatory walking time at her overtime pay rate. Mosher was paid for 14.99 hours of overtime at a rate of $43.96 per hour. But his mandatory walking time was not included, so he too is walking time at his overtime pay rate. Workers were not given an option to work overtime during busy back-to-school and holiday periods. “For example, Mosher and other similarly situated hourly warehouse employees were required to work an additional 20 hours per week, each week, from approximately June 2024 to January 2025,” states the complaint.

The complaint notes that Target has no excuse for calculating and paying all time worked as it already tracks the time employees enter and leave the building: “In this day and age, there is no technological barrier to paying Plaintiffs and other employees for such time…so it can readily calculate the time Plaintiffs and other employees spend walking to and from their assigned time clocks inside the warehouse.” The Times Union reported that one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys said, “Our clients filed this lawsuit for a simple reason: hourly workers in New York should be paid for all their hours worked.”

Bag Checks

As for bag checks, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2014 that Amazon warehouse workers didn’t have to be paid for time they spent going through security checks after their shifts to check for stolen goods. But the case, Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc. v. Busk, involved the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, and the Target lawsuit is targeting New York state labor law.

“Should discovery show that plaintiffs and other hourly warehouse employees spent significant time waiting in security lines when entering and/or exiting the warehouse at other times during the relevant time period, plaintiffs may amend this complaint to supplement these allegations accordingly,” the lawsuit states in a footnote.

This isn’t the first time Target has been accused of wage theft. The Minnesota Reformer in 2020 reported that a class action lawsuit was filed against Target in federal court for underpaying its Executive Team Leaders who spend more than half of their time doing tasks that hourly employees do, like checking out customers and stocking shelves, even though they’re classified as “executives” and are therefore not eligible for overtime pay.