Romero’s Food to pay $650K in unpaid wages to 26 delivery drivers

A Santa Fe Springs food manufacturer has been ordered to pay $650,000 in back wages to 26 delivery drivers who were misclassified as independent contractors and wrongly exempted from overtime pay as a result.

The April judgment by the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California also forbids Romero’s Food Products Inc. from engaging in future Fair Labor Standards Act violations.

The litigation follows an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division which found the drivers were denied overtime when they worked more than 40 hours in a regular workweek. The investigation covered a period from Oct. 16, 2017, through Oct. 15, 2022.

Representatives with Romero’s Food Products could not be reached for comment.

The drivers were employed to distribute the company’s food products to Walmart, Costco, Albertson’s, Stater Bros. and other retail grocery outlets throughout California, Nevada, Arizona and Washington.

Black workers at Bay Area Tesla factory call for class-action status

Tesla may face a class-action lawsuit after 240 Black factory workers in California described rampant racism and discrimination at the electric automaker’s San Francisco Bay Area plant, including frequent use of racial slurs and references to the manufacturing site as a plantation or slave ship.

The testimonies filed Monday in Alameda County Superior Court comes from contractors and employees who worked on the production floor of the factory in Fremont. The vast majority worked at the site between 2016 to the present. Lawyers suing Tesla, Inc. estimate at least 6,000 workers could be part of the class.

The individual testimonies are part of a 2017 lawsuit brought by Marcus Vaughn, who complained in writing to human resources and to Tesla CEO Elon Musk of a hostile work environment in which he was called slurs by co-workers and supervisors. No investigation was conducted and he was fired for “not having a positive attitude,” according to his lawyers.

The lawsuit is just one of several lawsuits alleging racism, harassment and discrimination at the Fremont plant.

Los Angeles Times cutting 74 jobs due to economic challenges

The Los Angeles Times on Wednesday announced plans to cut 74 jobs due to economic challenges as the newspaper strives to transform itself into a digital media organization.

In a message to staff, Times Executive Editor Kevin Merida wrote that employees whose positions are eliminated from the Pulitzer Prize -winning newspaper were being notified and that a staff meeting would be held to answer questions.

“We have done a vast amount of work as a company to meet the budget and revenue challenges head on. But that work will need acceleration and we will need more radical transformation in the newsroom for us to become a self-sustaining enterprise,” Merida wrote.

The cuts will eliminate about 13% of newsroom positions and affect full-time and temporary workers including editors, audio producers and managers, the Times reported. The cuts follow a series of layoffs at news organizations including the Washington Post and NPR.

The move also comes days after journalists at two dozen local newspapers across the U.S. walked off the job to demand an end to painful cost-cutting measures at Gannett, the country’s biggest newspaper chain.

Staff writer Kevin Smith and The Associated Press contributed to this report.