Why did former Save Mart manager work for more than 20 years then sue? ‘A breaking point’
Joey Christiansen was 17 years old when he started working at Save Mart in Antioch as a grocery bagger.
It was his first job. He grew up in the company, he said.
Christiansen traveled from store to store around the Bay Area before landing at a Food Maxx (owned by Save Mart Companies) in Oroville. He climbed the ranks from bagger to store director over a span of nearly 24 years.
He changed stores around 10 times in his career due to promotions and, in some cases, store closures.
Christiansen even was promoted for a three-month-long special assignment as acting director of store operations. He was in charge of six stores from Yuba City to the Redding area.
It was loyalty that kept him at Save Mart Companies from 2000 to April 2024, Christiansen said.
“It was a whole family atmosphere up until it really wasn’t,” he said.
The shift in atmosphere came in 2017 when Save Mart Companies had a change in leadership, Christiansen said. Co-president and COO Steve Junqueiro retired after 43 years with the company.
The year prior, Nicole Pesco — granddaughter of Save Mart co-founder Mike Piccinini — took over as company CEO.
“We were no longer as involved as we had been with all aspects of management,” he said. “Positions were starting to get cut throughout the company, and you could just sense there were changes coming.”
Problem peaked during pandemic, ex-manager says
During this time, Christiansian said, he first started experiencing wage theft. These experiences gradually became worse, peaking during the COVID-19 pandemic.
More than 50% of managerial tasks are supposed to be administrative, he said, and there are training and development tasks as well.
But Christiansen estimated that well over 75% of managers’ tasks should have been conducted by team members.
With labor cuts, managerial staff had to do tasks including cashiering, stocking shelves, pushing carts and receiving product loads.
Due to budget constraints, stores “weren’t allowed to have the staff to do those things,” so they became managers’ responsibilities, Christiansen said.
He spent more than 50% of his time doing nonmanagerial tasks, which is one alleged violation. And he had to work overtime with no additional pay, which is a second.
After the pandemic subsided, making managers do more with less was a new standard for Save Mart Companies, Christiansen said.
“I didn’t mind putting in the hard work at all,” he said. “But when they continue compounding the hard work ... there’s kind of a breaking point. That’s what I reached.”
So after more than 23 years with Save Mart Companies, Christiansen said he went on a leave of absence for several months due to job-related stress. He resigned April 2.
‘Light at the end of the tunnel’ unreached
Why would he stay several years after he began experiencing trouble with the company?
“You think you see the light at the end of the tunnel, so you push through,” Christiansen said. ”Especially after 15 to 20 years. And then it just goes further down.”
In addition to that, there’s a power dynamic involved, said Wes Griffith, the Cutter Law attorney representing Christiansen.
“There’s this real worry that if you push back against your employer, you demand the rights you’re entitled to — especially before you have lawyers involved — you’re going to be retaliated against,” Griffith said. “Maybe three, four or five years down the road, you can get your day in court. You can calculate what happened and have your rights vindicated. But that doesn’t solve the problem of putting food on the table tomorrow or paying your mortgage next month.”
During his leave of absence, Christiansen said he spoke with other store directors who relayed that the situation continued to worsen. That’s when he decided to take action.
He started searching online and found Cutter Law, a firm based in Sacramento that protects consumer rights, and Fairchild & Levine, a firm specializing in the enforcement of California employment laws, to represent him in a class-action lawsuit.
“It was a very tough decision (to sue) because they were loyal to me for so long and I was rewarded,” Christiansen said. “But at some point, around 2017, there were a lot of changes made to where there was no longer loyalty anymore. This being 2024, I thought (the loyalty) might come back. I had a hope and a dream — and it didn’t.”
The lawsuit accuses the company of multiple violations, including failing to provide minimum and overtime wages, denying meal and rest breaks and issuing inaccurate wage statements.
“What (Save Mart Companies) really did here is they gave people these titles (of manager), they gave them a salary which allowed them to force those individuals to work more than 40 hours a week for no additional compensation,” Griffith said. “That’s the key to wage theft.”
Christiansen and his attorneys filed the lawsuit against Save Mart Companies on Oct. 18 in Stanislaus Superior Court, the county in which the company is headquartered. The company was formally served Oct. 24.
Save Mart has not responded to multiple requests by The Modesto Bee for comment.
No longer a family-run company
“We’ve sued Save Mart at their corporate headquarters because we really view the violations as being directed from the top down,” Griffith said. “Save Mart has a reputation for being a local, family-run company. And that was true, until it wasn’t.”
In 2021, Chris McGarry became the first CEO who was not a member of Save Mart’s founding family, the Piccininis. The next year, the company was sold to Los Angeles-based private equity firm Kingswood Capital Management LP.
In June, Save Mart Companies was sold to The Jim Pattison Group, a multinational conglomerate headquartered in Canada.
“We think that’s part of what’s going on,” Griffith said. “These are not people who have skin in the game locally. These are people trying to exploit every dollar they can to add their bottom lines.”
The Jim Pattison Group has not been named as a party in the lawsuit at this time.
“Save Mart has a history of being sued over these practices,” Griffith said, citing the 2020 settlement of the years-long Curley vs. Save Mart lawsuit. “That lawsuit put them on notice that they were breaking the law. A well-run company would’ve taken that as an opportunity to change the practices and to bring them into compliance.”
Instead, Griffith said, Save Mart Companies concluded that it’s “effectively cheaper” to settle these lawsuits from time to time than it is to comply with the labor code and pay people the wages they are due.
What are the next steps?
Griffith said they’re looking at between one and three years to go through the discovery and motion practice associated with a case like this before trial, and then the case would go to trial before a jury in Modesto.
As for Christiansen, he’s going to make up for lost time with his 15- and 17-year-old children.
“We’ll see where it takes us,” he said.
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