Hotel workers in Indianapolis have filed a lawsuit alleging wage theft by a staffing agency and 10 hotels at which the agency placed the workers. Workers were forced to arrive early and begin working before clocking in and to work through unpaid breaks, working enough unpaid hours to push them below minimum wage. And what would you expect from this agency:
The employees named in the suit worked for a labor agency called Hospitality Staffing Solutions (HSS), which provides lower-rung workers to hotel companies like Hyatt on a temporary basis in cities across the country. On its website, HSS declares itself a client's "secret weapon for improving service while cutting costs -- 12% annually, on average." [...]
Management at Georgia-based HSS could not immediately be reached for comment. This isn’t the first time the company has been sued by workers. A former manager in Pittsburgh once filed a lawsuit claiming he was fired because he stood up for housekeepers who weren’t being paid what they were owed. The company has also been criticized for an advertisement it ran in a hotel trade publication that showed tiny workers inside a vending machine, apparently ready for purchase.
If you're a hotel that hires a company that advertises workers as products in a vending machine while promising to cut your costs and your workers are routinely showing up early for work without your costs reflecting the extra time, there's no way to pretend that wage theft is not exactly what you were contracting for.