Three former American Apparel employees who were among the nearly 200 workers fired by the retailer earlier this month have filed a class action lawsuit with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.
According to Reuters, the laid-off workers are seeking about $1 million in damages for not receiving appropriate legal notice.
The labor complaint filed on Apr. 16 accuses the made-in-U.S.A. clothing company of violating the Worker Adjustment and Restraining Notification (WARN) Act—which prohibits surprise mass firings by companies that have more than 100 employees—by discharging long-time workers without a full day’s warning and forcing them to sign releases without sufficient time to seek legal advice.
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“I was told I had to sign a release immediately or I would not receive any severance at all,” said Dominga Valencia, one of the three plaintiffs, in a statement released on Saturday by nonprofit organization Hermandad Mexicana. “I stood there worried about how I would be able to feed my family without my severance.”
It’s the latest in a string of allegations against the Los Angeles-based company, which canned founder Dov Charney last December (he’s seeking $40 million in damages in a separate lawsuit) and has also come under fire from a coalition of factory workers demanding that the words “Sweatshop Free” be dropped from advertising.
“American Apparel promised its workers and its customers that it would be an ethical employer,” said Nativo Lopez of Hermandad Mexicana. “The only thing sweat-free at American Apparel is the way that management regards labor law. Its Wall Street owners say ‘we need to dump workers now’ and its management responds ‘no sweat.’”
While the company’s new CEO Paula Schneider is trying to re-brand American Apparel by toning down its infamously provocative campaigns in favor of some of its female employees and a 23-year-old sloth called Buttercup, a recently leaked casting e-mail calling for “real models” and not “Instagram hoes” hasn’t improved public opinion.
In addition, internal documents obtained by Buzzfeed revealed that sales were down nearly 11 percent as of Mar. 31 compared with the year-ago period, while numbers slumped more than 15 percent in Chicago, LA and New York.
