Employee Lawsuit brought against Sephora for unpaid wages

Sephora is at the centre of an Employee Lawsuit after workers accused the retailer of failing to adequately compensate them for time spent going through security and applying make-up before a shift.

The lawsuit was brought against it in the Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco, with a team of attorneys representing around 8,000 Sephora workers. The employees are asking the judge to grant class certification for the wage-and-hour lawsuit, according to a report by Top Class Actions.

However, despite Judge Karnow raising concerns that lack of solid evidence of the unpaid time spent in work could lead to liability issues, attorneys on the Sephora employee lawsuit countered that this lack of time logging was due to Sephora, which had a ‘duty to track’.

An attorney allegedly stated, “As far as liability goes, a lot of the claims involve time. You can’t allow an employer to avoid paying employees by virtue of the fact it didn’t track its time. That means an employee cannot prove his or her damages. If they had tracked time, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

Sephora workers were said to have provided evidence that they are expected to wear and maintain their make up as part of their duties, while the lawsuit also alleged the retailer failed to provide ample rest and meal breaks.

The beauty retailer is said to have started compensating workers an extra three minutes for security bag checks, a move that attorneys argue is an acknowledgement by Sephora that it had been failing to do this previously.