A woman is suing the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, alleging she was wrongfully fired from her job as director of the Discovery Gardens Fullerton preschool for complaining about being wrongfully classified as a salaried employee in order to avoid paying her overtime.
Cynthia Greenspan’s Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit alleges multiple state Labor Code violations, including failure to pay overtime and all wages due. She seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages in the suit brought Wednesday.
Robert Williams, a spokesman for the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, issued a statement Thursday regarding the suit: “We believe all employees should be treated fairly according to the spirit and letter of the law, but in this case, we have no details about the matter as yet.”
Greenspan was hired in January 2022 as director of the preschool and her main job duties included operating, managing and running all aspects of the campus located next to the Emmanuel Episcopal Church of Fullerton. Greenspan alleges that the defendants “engaged in an illegal scheme” of misclassifying her and other employees as salaried personnel in order to deprive them of overtime wages.
From the time of her hiring, Greenspan regularly worked more than eight hours daily and 50 to 60 hours weekly, according to her suit. She also was usually not given meal breaks or rest breaks and those she did manage to take were often interrupted, the suit states.
Greenspan complained to her supervisor, Emmanuel Episcopal Church Pastor Bill Garrison, that she was not being paid enough to be classified as a salaried employee, but Garrison “dismissed plaintiff’s complaints and implied that (she) did not know what she was talking about,” according to the suit, which further states that she was unable to get in contact with a human resources representative.
Greenspan tried again to get help from Garrison, but the pastor “feigned ignorance about her complaints and attempted to change the subject by yelling at plaintiff for not providing him with an enrollment report,” the suit states.
A frustrated Greenspan filed a complaint with the state Labor Commissioner on Aug. 14, but in retaliation for her complaints directly with her employer and also with the state, Garrison fired her on Sept. 7, according to the suit.
Greenspan has suffered substantial losses in earnings and employment benefits as well as emotional distress since her firing, the suit states.