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 More than a dozen low-level hotel workers in Indianapolis have filed a class-action lawsuit against ten of the city's hotels and a labor staffing agency, claiming they were routinely cheated out of pay with the knowledge of hotel management.

The workers -- most of them Hispanic immigrants employed as housekeepers, dishwashers and bussers -- say they were forced to work off the clock and through their unpaid breaks, sometimes pushing their earnings below the minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. The suit could potentially involve more than a thousand workers and millions of dollars in claims, according to the hotel workers union UNITE HERE, which is organizing workers in Indianapolis.

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."

A HuffPost report in August chronicled how the outsourcing of work to HSS has led to a two-class system within certain hotels, as lesser-paid agency workers toil alongside better-compensated direct hires. Several Indianapolis hotel workers told HuffPost then that the agency shorted them on their wages and threatened them with dismissal if they couldn't finish their work in the allotted time. The CEO of HSS said at the time that any instances of unpaid wages were honest mistakes and that the company took the allegations seriously.

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.

Read More http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/09/hotel-workers-stiffed-wages_n_1194757.html

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Lawsuit information can be found here:SANCHEZ et al v. HOSPITALITY STAFFING SOLUTIONS, LLC http://bit.ly/yO9MIW

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