Rami Levy faces class-action lawsuit over wage deductions from supermarket cashiers

Two former Rami Levy cashiers who challenged deductions totaling NIS 303.20 from their pay will now represent a wider group of workers after the Jerusalem Regional Labor Court on Tuesday approved their case as a class action over register shortages.

The ruling turns a dispute over small deductions from two workers’ wages into a case that can now be brought on behalf of cashiers across the nationwide chain. The court said the workers had a reasonable chance of winning the case and that a class action was the best way to hear it.

The case now covers Rami Levy employees who worked as cashiers from seven years previous to the filing of the request in 2023 and had money deducted from their wages because their registers came up short. The workers had sought to include all company employees affected by the alleged practice, but the court limited the group to cashiers.

The case was brought by Meir Adri and Baruch Shaltiel. Adri worked as a cashier for about five months in 2018, when the company deducted NIS 45.70 from his April salary after a shortage was recorded at his register. He denied signing the company’s authorization form. The court did not decide at this stage whether the signature was his, but said two different dates on the document raised doubts about its authenticity.

Shaltiel worked for Rami Levy for nearly six years, most of the time as a cashier. The company deducted NIS 200 and NIS 57.50 from his wages after shortages were recorded in July and November 2016, according to the ruling.

Rami Levy faces class-action lawsuit

Israeli law generally allows employers to deduct money from a worker’s pay only in specific circumstances. One exception applies when a worker has agreed in writing that a debt is owed to the employer. Even then, no more than one-quarter of the worker’s pay may be deducted.

Rami Levy argued that register shortages were clear debts that workers had agreed in writing to repay after an internal check. It said its procedures required the money to be counted again and the area around the register to be searched. Shortages above NIS 100 were sent to a security officer for further examination.

The company also said it did not deduct money when a worker refused to sign and argued that each shortage had to be examined separately, making the case unsuitable for a class action.

The workers argued that being responsible for a register did not mean every shortage became their personal debt. They said money could be missing because of an ordinary mistake, a counterfeit banknote, a customer misleading the cashier, another worker using the register, or an error when the money was counted.

They also alleged that workers were pressured to sign deduction forms at the end of late shifts, after the store had closed and while their colleagues were waiting to leave.
At this stage, the court largely accepted the workers’ account. It said money can be deducted from wages as a debt only when the amount is clear and either proven or not disputed. A register shortage, by contrast, often requires an investigation to establish what happened and who, if anyone, was responsible.

The court found that Rami Levy had effectively imposed what it called a system of “absolute responsibility,” under which cashiers could be required to cover shortages even when their cause could not be identified.

It also found that a worker’s signature did not necessarily amount to free consent. Signing the company’s procedures was part of being hired, while the deduction forms were sometimes presented under pressure after a shortage was discovered.

The ruling does not mean that a worker can never be held responsible for money lost during a shift. An employer can still seek repayment if it can prove that the worker caused the loss. It cannot, however, decide on its own that a disputed register shortage is the worker’s debt and simply deduct it from the worker’s pay.

The class action will deal only with money deducted from wages. The original request also alleged that some cashiers were made to cover shortages in cash, but that claim was not included in the part of the case approved by the court.

The workers’ lawyer must submit a public notice for the court’s approval within 30 days. The notice, which will explain the case and workers’ right to leave the group, must then be published in two daily newspapers.

Rami Levy must file its defense in the class action within 30 days, after which the court will decide how the case will proceed.

The company was also ordered to pay NIS 25,000 in legal fees for this stage of the case and NIS 4,000 in expenses to each of the two cashiers who brought it.