She spent her days serving up Happy Meals, but when it came time to get paid, Natalie Gunshannon says a local McDonald's franchisee gave her an unhappy deal.
The Shavertown McDonald's forces workers to be paid only one way: with a payroll debit card that burdens workers with hefty fees to obtain their hard-earned cash, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday on behalf of Ms. Gunshannon and other McDonald's workers.
Ms. Gunshannon, 27, Dallas Twp., and an untold number of current and former employees had no option to receive a traditional paycheck or get paid by direct deposit, she and her attorneys said in the class-action against franchise owners Albert and Carol Mueller of Clarks Summit.
Ms. Gunshannon, who worked at the Shavertown McDonald's for a month after being hired April 24, refused to activate the payroll card after reviewing the fee structure, quit the job and reached out to an attorney to see if the practice was legal.
Attorney Michael J. Cefalo of West Pittston and his law firm then drafted a class-action lawsuit against the Muellers, who own 15 other McDonald's locations throughout Northeast Pennsylvania.
Filed in Luzerne County Court, the suit accused the Muellers and their limited partnership of violating the Pennsylvania Wage Payment and Collection Act and unlawfully boosting profits with the payroll card "scheme."
The suit seeks an unspecified amount of monetary damages on behalf of employees and asks a judge to award punitive damages against the company.
Beth Dal Santo, a spokeswoman for an association of McDonald's franchisees in the region, said the Muellers had not been served with the lawsuit Thursday and would not comment.
Ms. Gunshannon said the manager of the Muellers' Shavertown location refused to issue her a paper paycheck or pay via direct deposit, saying, "We only pay on the card."
The J.P. Morgan Chase payroll card carries fees for nearly every type of transaction, according to the lawsuit, including a $1.50 charge for ATM withdrawals, $5 for over-the-counter cash withdrawals, $1 to check the balance, 75 cents per online bill payment and $10 per month if the card is left inactive for more than three months.
A spokeswoman for the McDonald's Corp., which is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit, did not respond to a telephone message and emailed questions Thursday about the company's guidelines for how its franchisees should pay employees.
Mr. Cefalo said they filed the lawsuit on behalf of all current and former employees who were paid with payroll cards without being given the option of receiving their wages in cash or via a check. State law, he said, requires wages be paid in "lawful money" or with a check.
The definition of "lawful money" is unclear, but the state Department of Labor and Industry and state banking regulators have endorsed payroll cards as a legal form of wage payment, according to the American Payroll Association, an industry trade association.
A spokeswoman for the state Department of Labor and Industry said Thursday the department was researching the matter.
Ms. Gunshannon, who estimated the company owes her about $200, said she pursued the lawsuit because she thinks workers should have a choice in how they are paid.
"I tried to work with the company. They refused. I tried the main office in Clarks Summit. They refused," Ms. Gunshannon said. "I never activated the card. I refused the fees. I just want it to be fair."
how muck you want to bet these Mueller scumbags who own the McDonalds are jews?
ReplyDeleteThat's a fool's bet if I've ever seen one. You have no chance of losing. Scamming and being sheitzers is genetic with those people.
ReplyDeleteOink Vey!
ReplyDeleteIt's like the miners and the company store before unionization. This is why everyone needs the right to unionize.
ReplyDeleteAnti Semites!
ReplyDeleteHoly Redeemer Hospital, another Pennsylvania outfit, forced this scheme on their employees too. Apparently they can’t get enough profit even though they are tax exempt! Shift the payroll costs onto the employees. Profit, profit, profit. That’s all that matters.
ReplyDeleteThere are enough stupid people eating there and enough stupid people working for them
ReplyDeleteAnother example of the Banksters abuse over the population. People, do not play there games! demand to be paid cash, it is agaisnt the law to force people getting paid by those cards! pure & simple!
ReplyDeleteGood! i hope she wins and mcDonald's has to pay her wages, interest and penalties like the IRS charges us when our payments are late! Good for her! BOYCOTT MCDee's!!!
ReplyDeleteBig banks and corporations, it does not get any clearer than that.
ReplyDeleteThis is why our country is going to the dogs. I will share this
with others. Food for thought when we decide we want a quick bite.
So... $1.50 to take your whole cheque out in cash and move it to another account? THINK, McFly.
ReplyDeleteMcDeaths and Chase are business criminals.. but fuck you idiot brainless nazi ass licking lowlives posting here. I'd like to see your ass handed to you by a Jew.
ReplyDeleteThis is the old truck system which in Britain the Victorians got rid of through one of several Truck Acts (I think it was the Truck Act of 1872). Truck was an old name for credit, whereby only part of a wage was paid in cash so a worker could pay his landlord and meet funeral insurances met and such instances where cash was a necessity, but the rest was paid in truck - credit - to be spent in the company store. The company store sold everything needed to live on, usually at extortionate mark-ups.
ReplyDeleteThe Truck Act 1872 meant all wages had to be paid in cash, and in Britain in the 1980s the Tories had to repeal the Truck Act so employees no longer had a say when their wages were paid into a bank and no longer through a pay packet. This gave banks much more control over the money supply and one bank insider, Chief Executive of the British Bankers Association, was Angela Knight who served in one of Thatcher's Cabinets, and she left politics shortly after this repeal and went back into banking.