Escondido, CADoes Guitar Center figure it's more economical to settle one lawsuit after another regarding California labor law violations than follow the rules? Is the company saving that much money by treating its employees so abysmally? Benny J. is yet another disgruntled employee who has filed a complaint against the company.
Benny has been working as assistant manager at a Guitar Center for two years. "I haven't been fired yet but I'm sure it is coming soon," he says. Although Benny is in sales, if a customer brings him potentially defective merchandise, he has to test it before writing a repair order because it could be a customer defect (also called operator problem), such as pushing the wrong button.
One day last November a customer brought in an amplifier for repair. "I took the amp into the 'live room' and knelt down, plugged it in and it started smoking so I either turned it off or unplugged it or both (I can't remember exactly), says Benny. But he does remember receiving a tremendous shock of electricity through his arm. "My body clamped down for about five or ten seconds," he says.
Benny fell backwards onto the floor and finally picked myself up. He reported the incident to an operations manager (who was also the rep for HR) and didn't think much of it, except that his hands "tingled". But three days later, Benny suffered atrial fibrillation (a-fib) and had a seizure. "I'd never had anything like this in my life and now my hands were numb," says Benny.
"On December 17th I had a seizure at home and my wife phoned 911," he says. "I was taken to ER and they did a lot of tests, including an MRI. As well, I had electrodes on my head that showed seizure activity on the left side of my brain.
"Two days later I made another report to HR about my hospital visit and asked them to arrange a doctor—that is procedure with our insurer," Benny says, "but they didn't do anything. Benny made an appointment with his family doctor.
"Mysteriously both HR reports disappeared--did they eat them or what," he says. "The operations manager who I filed the first report with was fired one week later. The second guy resigned in January.
And I know of five other reported injuries to Guitar Center, including me. One guy filed a lawsuit and the company settled: he needed neck surgery. A female co-worker suffered a concussion when something fell from a top shelf. (She didn't come back to work.) And a huge roll of speaker wires fell on a customer when somebody had stacked them on a flimsy pegboard: he was taken away by ambulance.
We are supposed to have safety meetings but all the operation managers do is walk around with a safety sheet and ask us if we have seen the safety video (never), then we have to sign the sheet. If we don't sign it they will send us home. I can't afford to take unpaid time off work."
But Benny hasn't a choice—he is unable to perform his duties and can't return to work. For one thing, he can't climb a ladder. Yet Guitar Center's insurer denied him disability benefits and he has been off work since November 24, 2007.
Benny has filed a lawsuit against Guitar Center for back pay and medical bills. And he wants to return to work—technically, he is still an employee. "I'm getting $1,000 per month from social security—I could probably collect more in a tin can," says Benny. "I was making anywhere from $2,500 to $3,500 per month (base salary plus commission) so it's tough. As well as the a-fib, I have nerve damage in my fingers and my vision has deteriorated. But the worst are the seizures that caused my driver's license to be taken away.
Why was his claim denied? Guitar Center has the answer--they supplied three witnesses.
Benny's insurance policy states that if two qualified medical providers prove you are disabled, a claim must be accepted. Benny has three medical doctors who signed reports stating he is disabled—it would seem like a "cut and dry" case.
But the witnesses from the company said there was no accident. "One witness against me wasn't even working there," says Benny, "and the other guy is a repair tech that fixed the amp. When I called him, he told me it could only have happened with a ground default. I went back to the store, found the power supply, unplugged it from the wall and found that the ground was broken off. And I have evidence--I took pictures of it. As for the third witness, he was the customer who brought the amp into the store to be repaired. He said there was nothing wrong with it, but I copied a repair order from the shop that says it cost $120 to fix.
They shouldn't get away with this."
Benny is not the first employee to file a lawsuit against Guitar Centers. In December 2005 Guitar Center Inc. agreed to pay up to $3.5 million to settle two class action lawsuits alleging violations of California's wage and hour law. The lawsuits alleged that the company improperly documented and enforced break-time and lunch-time periods for hourly retail store employees in the California .
"While the Company denies all liability or wrongdoing in these cases, we chose to settle these lawsuits in order to put them behind us and avoid the distraction and additional, unnecessary legal expenses that we would otherwise incur," says Leland P. Smith, executive vice president and general counsel for Guitar Center. Looks like he might face further "distractions".