Jones v. PeopleReady Inc.
| Docket Number | Civil Action 21-cv-01688-PAB-MEH |
| Decision Date | 16 June 2022 |
| Parties | ALISON D. JONES, Plaintiff, v. PEOPLEREADY INC., Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Colorado |
RECOMMENDATION OF UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE
Before the Court is the Motion to Dismiss by Defendant “PeopleReady Inc., ” (as it clarifies in its Motion the spacing and punctuation of its name). ECF 46. The Motion is fully briefed, and the Court finds that oral argument will not materially assist in its adjudication. Based on the record herein and for the reasons that follow the Court recommends that the Motion be granted.
Plaintiff sues Defendant for not paying her timely as required by the Colorado Wage Claim Act, Colo. Rev. Stat. § 8-4-103(1)(a), (“CWCA”). Plaintiff next contends that Defendant responded to her wage payment demand by terminating her employment, for which she brings a claim of unlawful retaliation in violation of both the CWCA and the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C. § 215(a), (“FLSA”). Lastly, Plaintiff brings a Title VII claim under 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2 for race and sex discrimination.
For purposes of this ruling, the Court accepts as true the factual allegations-but not any legal conclusions, bare assertions, or conclusory allegations-that Plaintiff raises in her Second Amended Complaint (“SAC”) (ECF 36). See generally Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (). Given her pro se status, the Court construes her pleadings broadly. The Court also refers to the previous iterations of her complaint for additional background and context where helpful to better understand her claims for relief. Vreeland v. Huss, No. 18-cv-00303-PAB-SKC, 2021 WL 1171670, at *5 (D. Colo. Mar. 29, 2021); Lassley v. Aminokit Labs., Inc., No. 15-cv-01531-REB-MJW, 2015 WL 9437879, at *1 (D. Colo. Nov. 18, 2015) ().
For over ten years Defendant employed Plaintiff. ECF 1 at 25. Plaintiff was a temporary worker who Defendant assigned to job sites to fill other businesses' short-term staffing needs. The SAC lists several businesses where she had worked as temporary staff going back to June 2019. ECF 36 at 6-8, 11.
She recounts incidents of reverse race discrimination and sexual harassment that she experienced at those different workplaces. She does not say that any Defendant employee was involved in those alleged discriminatory acts. Rather, she complains about comments and threatening behavior by the respective client employees as well as by members of the public and even her own acquaintances. Id. Defendant's clients (who operated the job sites) mostly did not intervene, Plaintiff complains, although she notes exceptions when they called police or security guards to assist her. Id. at 7.
She brings her claim for relief on the theory that Defendant “can be held liable for discrimination occurring at client job sites if [it was] reasonably aware of [the discrimination but] did nothing to stop it.” Id. at 6. She contends that Defendant should have known of the situations. She acknowledges that it would be the client who requested Defendant not to return her to the job site, but such requests require the client to state a reason. She awaits discovery to obtain those documents to see what reasons clients expressed. Id. at 9. Plaintiff doubts that a client would expressly state an unlawful reason, but she suspects that discriminatory intent nonetheless would be discernable from “read[ing] between the lines.” Id. at 9. She adds that Defendant should have known the truth of what was happening. “Considering the number of jobs [she] was removed from, there was no way [Defendant] could not have been aware of the problem, ” she reasons. Id. at 6-7. Instead, Defendant would not return her to the clients' job sites, and that caused her to earn less than she otherwise would. ECF 1 at 26, 28. She lists six such instances of job site removal during March and April 2020 alone for which she calculates $4, 360 in lost wages. ECF 36 at 8.
However, those alleged incidents of discrimination and harassment are unrelated to her termination. She was fired on April 14, 2020 after a dispute over untimely paid wages. Her argument is that Defendant did not pay wages by the deadline that Colo. Rev. Stat. § 8-4-103(1)(a) imposes. “The agreed upon pay period at [Defendant] was daily work/daily pay, ” by which she means each day's wages were due to be paid at the end of that same workday, with late-shift workhours compensated on the next day. Id. at 4.
Plaintiff describes Defendant as having a reputation for not paying wages in a timely fashion. She alleges that “[n]ot getting paid or getting paid late was a common practice” and the subject of co-workers' repeat Department of Labor grievances and lawsuits. Id. at 2. She herself was frustrated with Defendant, having “been shortchanged by this company many times” (id), and experiencing prior instances of delayed payment (ECF 1 at 29). She has records of extensive email and text message correspondence regarding this issue. ECF 36 at 2, 4, 9.
She had been working at supermarket stores in March 2020 doing COVID-related sanitation for which she had problems getting paid. ECF 1 at 26, 29. On the weekend of April 11 and 12, 2020, she was assigned to a nursing home. Id. at 28. Because she had forgotten to bring her paysheet with her, she and the client arranged to place her workhours on a co-worker's time sheet. She texted a photo of the pay sheet to her manager at Defendant's office. That Monday, Defendant had not paid for the prior weekend's work. She called her manager to complain. In a post-termination letter to Defendant's Human Resources department, she detailed the various disagreements she had with her manager regarding this issue generally. Id. at 28-29.
Plaintiff denies submitting her time sheets in a way that slowed Defendant's ability to process them, the reason Defendant gives for the delays. ECF 36 at 3. However, in her later letter to Defendant's Human Resources department, Plaintiff conceded the use of paper pay sheets was part of the problem. ECF 1 at 26. She also attributed the delayed payment of her wages from working at the retirement home to the client's failure to turn in her timesheet. ECF 36 at 8.
The matter came to a head on April 14, 2020 when she complained to her manager about non-payment for her most recent job assignment. “On this particular occasion, [she] got into a heated argument with [him] for repeatedly failing to pay her on time.” Id. at 2. Indeed, there were “five heated phone calls to [her manager].” Id. at 2. It was on this day, immediately after the altercation, when her manager fired her, she emphasizes. Id. at 2-3. In another filing, Plaintiff added that “[a]fter the fifth or sixth call, [she] finally lost her temper and raised her voice.” ECF 27 at 5. She concedes asserting “her demand for payment” in a “very firm” way, but she denies using “any disrespectful terminology or personally insult[ing her manager].” Id. at 5. Nevertheless, the manager “interpreted [her behavior] as being insubordinate and terminated her on the spot.” Id. Her termination “was solely retaliatory for challenging [her manager] on her incompetence and untimely payment.” Id. at 7. That is also what Plaintiff told the EEOC. In her discrimination charge, she recalled becoming “angry with [her manager who] was incompetent.” Her manager told her that she “was being disrespectful and acting insubordinate, ” and the manager “subsequently discharged [her] on or around April 14, 2020.” ECF 11 at 43.
Later that same day, Defendant's website blocked her ability to log in to check job postings. It was when she called Defendant about that technical difficulty that she learned of her termination. Id. Defendant did “eventually pay her” the claimed wages, she admits, even if it fired her “for complaining about it.” ECF 36 at 2.
On May 25, 2020, a little over a month after her termination, she filed an internal complaint with Defendant's Human Resources department. Id. She recites the content of that communication in her initial complaint. ECF 1 at 25-31. In it, she addressed the history of reverse race discrimination and sexual harassment she experienced at job sites over the years. She also complained about being fired “in retaliation for arguing with a Hispanic manager who illegally refused to pay [her].” Id. at 26. Plaintiff alleges that the Human Resources department took no substantive action in response, and she construes its inaction as indicative of Defendant's “lackadaisical attitude towards discrimination at their job sites.” Id. at 2.
On December 18, 2020, Plaintiff filed a complaint with the EEOC. Id. She attached to her initial Complaint an image of a “2nd Amended Charge of Discrimination” that references a discrimination date of April 14, 2020. ECF 1 at 33-35. However, the image is small and difficult to read.
The purpose of a motion to dismiss under Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6) is to test the sufficiency of a plaintiff's complaint. Sutton v. Utah State Sch. for the Deaf & Blind 173 F.3d 1226, 1236 (10th Cir. 2008). “To survive a motion to dismiss, a complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.'” Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678 (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007)). Plausibility, in the context of a motion to dismiss, means that the plaintiff pleads facts that allow “the court to draw the reasonable inference...
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