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California cannabis company Glass House Brands Inc. and a number of its subsidiaries were hit with a proposed class action suit Tuesday claiming it bilked workers out of sick pay, minimum wage and lunch breaks and that it illegally enforced quotas.
The Glass House companies "regularly" made workers labor beyond eight hours in a single day and more than 40 hours a week, but they did not pay overtime for this, the lawsuit claims.
The worksites were understaffed for the amount of labor the cannabis companies wanted accomplished, the suit said. The managers therefore imposed "excessive quotas" that required a single worker "to clean four pounds of cannabis per day," a high production demand that violated the state's Industrial Welfare Commission Wage Orders, according to the suit.
Lead plaintiff Gerardo Melendez looks to represent a class of former and current employees of Glass House or its subsidiaries that deal in real estate or cannabis cultivation in the city of Carpinteria. The suit also takes aim at a staffing company, Labor Force Management Inc., which supplied workers to Glass House.
The lawsuit seeks damages under California's Private Attorneys General Act for anyone who worked for the company during the last four years, with the applicable statute of limitations during COVID-19 pandemic months — specifically April 6 to Oct. 1, 2020 — being tolled according to Emergency Rule 9.
