Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani South Jersey Partners Melissa J. Brown and Jonathan R. Stuckel secured a definitive victory before the New Jersey Appellate Division, which affirmed the dismissal with prejudice of a putative wage class action filed against a group of healthcare facilities throughout the state of New Jersey.
The plaintiff, a certified nursing assistant, alleged that the facility violated the New Jersey Wage Payment Law by deducting thirty minutes of pay for unpaid meal breaks that she claimed employees were often unable to take due to workload and staffing demands. The complaint sought relief on behalf of a proposed class of hundreds of similarly situated employees spanning across the entire state.
The South Jersey team moved to dismiss the complaint under New Jersey Rule 4:6-2(e), arguing that the plaintiff’s claims could not proceed in court because the issues were governed by a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) that addressed wages, hours, scheduling, lunch periods, and mandatory grievance and arbitration procedures. The trial court granted the motion and dismissed the complaint with prejudice.
On appeal, the Appellate Division affirmed the dismissal in full. The court agreed that the plaintiff’s claims fell squarely within the collective bargaining agreement’s grievance and arbitration provisions and that the plaintiff was required to pursue the contractual grievance process rather than file suit in Superior Court. Notably, the Appellate Division agreed with the South Jersey team’s argument that permitting a plaintiff to litigate these claims in court despite the existence of a controlling CBA would only serve to erode the collective bargaining process and would contravene long-standing public policy favoring arbitration and internal resolution of labor disputes. The court further held that dismissal with prejudice was appropriate because the plaintiff could not amend the complaint to avoid the controlling grievance procedure.
This result reinforces the importance of enforcing bargained-for grievance and arbitration procedures in employment disputes involving unionized employees and confirms that plaintiffs may not bypass those procedures by recasting contract-based workplace disputes as statutory wage claims.