McCabe Law Firm Reaches Wage Settlement Against Large Griffin Georgia Manufacturer (1888 Mills) on Behalf of 48 Employees
The McCabe Law Firm recently reached a settlement that was approved in federal court in Atlanta on behalf of 48 current or former employees of 1888 Mills. 1888 Mills is a global manufacturer of home and commercial textile products for the retail. 1888 Mills operates one of the last remaining towel plants in the United States in Griffin, Georgia, and is a vendor for Walmart. 1888 Mills employs hundreds of low-wage workers in its manufacturing facility in Griffin who generally work long workweeks with significant amounts of overtime. Their wage rates ranged from $8 to $17 per hour for manual laborers.
Over two years ago, Melissa Brown filed a collective action lawsuit against her former employer, 1888 Mills, alleging that it had unlawfully altered the clock in and clock out times of its employees in order to reduce their wages and the amount they were paying in overtime. In the court proceedings, the Defendant initially claimed that it had no longer possessed the actual time records of its employees, even though the time records were entered through software that should have maintained them. Despite Defendant’s contention, we pressed further and then discovered that those time records did still exist and that they corroborated Ms. Brown’s claims that the company had been changing its employees’ time/pay records, resulting in the employees not receiving the full amount of pay for the time they worked.
The District Court approved the case conditionally as a collective action, and notice was sent to over 300 potentially aggrieved current and former employees. Nearly 50 of the addresses provided by the company for employees were returned as insufficient. In the end, 48 current or former employees joined the lawsuit. Settlement was reached and approved by the court on May 12, 2023 for those 48 employees in alleged overtime damages and liquidated damages in the amount of $71,400. While we wish that more current and former employees had joined the case and been compensated, we were pleased with the result, which provided compensation of more than 100% of the estimated back wages the employees were due.