Ebony Magazine Hit With Class Action Lawsuit By Former Employees

Source: COULSTYLE / Coulstyle

Ebony Magazine Hit With Class Action Lawsuit By Former Employees

Ebony Magazine has been entangled in the #EbonyOwes saga since the end of 2017. Around that time, their former freelancers and employees took to Twitter to air out the fact they haven’t been paid and beyond that, couldn’t get an update on where their money was.

In March of 2018, we reported that everything had been resolved and quarterly payments were issued due to the settlement reached, in which Ebony didn’t admit any wrong-doing. But now, it seems like even more issues are on the horizon for the historic publication.

According to reports from The Root, Ebony has been hit with a new class-action lawsuit. The lawsuit comes from–you guessed it–former employees looking for the payments they feel they are owed.

The complaint, which was filed on Wednesday, names Ebony Media Operations LLC; CVG Group LLC; Michael Gibson, CVG Group co-founder and chairman; and Elizabeth Burnett, vice president of operations of CVG Group, as defendants and accuses them of “betraying the magazine’s employees and readers” by “engaging in a consistent pattern and practice of laying off their staff and failing to pay them their final wages.” Additionally, Ebony is accused of failing to reimburse employees for work-related expenses or pay out their unused vacation days.

The class-action lawsuit also goes on to allege that Ebony is guilty of fraud for their failure to match their employees’ 401k contributions and deductions they claim never hit their 401K for reimbursement. The lawsuit consist of 7 employees total with different tenure, some as early as this summer (when Ebony fired its entire digital staff.)

Hopefully, they get this resolved and this is the last we hear of the #EbonyPays saga– besides the former employees getting what’s owed to them.