Class certification approved on wage statement claim

In a recent case, a California Court of Appeal considered whether individuals who worked as signature gatherers had a right to proceed as a class on their claims that they were improperly classified as independent contractors and were entitled to minimum wage, overtime pay, meal and rest breaks, expense reimbursements, timely final wage payments, and itemized wage statements.

Facts

Mosanthony Wilson and Nancy Urschel brought a putative wage-and-hour class action against The La Jolla Group (LJG), a legal and political consulting firm. The majority of LJG's political work is related to signature gathering. LJG acts as a broker between organizations seeking signatures, usually political campaigns and political action committees, and the signature gatherers themselves. The political organizations generate blank signature sheets, which LJG provides to the signature gatherers, who collect the signatures from registered voters.

LJG doesn't provide training to the signature gatherers, tell them where or when to collect signatures, or require them to work a certain number of hours or collect a certain number of signatures. The signature gatherers call the LJG hotline to find out if there are any active signature collection efforts and determine how much time they want to work for the firm. They may collect signatures for other brokers besides LJG. Indeed, if multiple brokers are working with the same political campaign or political action committee, a signature gatherer may obtain blank signature sheets from one broker and submit completed ones to a different broker.