Plaintiff says he developed incontinence from bathroom restrictions
Former temporary workers at a HelloFresh distribution center in Newark, New Jersey allege in a proposed amended class action complaint that supervisors physically assaulted them, restricted their bathroom access, and threatened to report them to U.S. immigration authorities. The lawsuit, first filed in August 2024 against the meal-kit delivery service and three staffing agencies, is scheduled for review by a New Jersey state court judge at a hearing on 23 October.
The complaint names HelloFresh, Action Staffing, On Target Staffing and ProStaff Workforce Solutions as defendants. It alleges the company and the staffing agencies assigned Hispanic temporary workers the hardest work, that supervisors consistently made racist, abusive remarks to workers and berated them for speaking Spanish rather than English, and that supervisors enforced a no-cellphone policy for Hispanic workers while not enforcing it for others. The complaint also alleges that workers were subjected to verbal and physical abuse, had their identification badges — required to leave the facility — taken away, and that managers repeatedly threatened to contact U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement against workers.
Luis Penafiel, who worked as a temporary employee at the Newark distribution center from November 2021 to August 2023 and is a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said working conditions began to deteriorate shortly after he was hired. “We started to realize that because we were Latinos, we were being forced to do all these kinds of duties. We started noting the discrimination,” he said.
“We were afraid of punishment for complaining,” Penafiel said. “We want the authorities to listen to us and to realize the conditions that people are working under at these places.”
The complaint details an alleged bathroom policy applied to Hispanic workers, who were required to sign out before leaving the production line and whose time away was logged by supervisors. “There were many times I had to hold it for hours because they would note down the time you went in,” Penafiel said. “I had to go to the clinic to a urologist because I started experiencing incontinence, as I had to hold it for a long time and ended up getting infections.”
According to the lawsuit, “on several occasions, a HelloFresh manager menaced Hispanic workers with a baseball bat to limit their time in the bathroom and force them to return to work on HelloFresh’s production line.” The complaint alleges the policy was so restrictive that multiple Hispanic workers “were forced to urinate on themselves and continue to work,” and that at least one worker brought extra clothing to work because she had been forced to urinate on herself on several occasions. The suit claims non-Hispanic workers were permitted unrestricted bathroom access while temp workers were expected to cover their lines.
The complaint also alleges sexual harassment of female Hispanic employees, including instances of workers grabbing their body parts, having managers show workers pornography and photos of their genitalia, using loaves of bread and cucumbers to simulate sex acts, and regularly propositioning female workers for sex. The lawsuit alleges that supervisors “physically assaulted and battered several Hispanic employees during their employment at HelloFresh,” describing the alleged assaults as managers “physically beating workers,” “putting their hands around workers’ necks” and “screaming in workers’ ears.” The suit also claims workers were denied medical treatment for injuries sustained on the job.
HelloFresh denied all allegations. “Upon learning of these allegations, which date from 2023 and years prior, we conducted a thorough internal investigation and found these claims to be entirely without merit,” a HelloFresh spokesperson said in an email. “We vehemently denied these allegations when this lawsuit was filed over two years ago, and we continue to vehemently deny them today.” The company filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit in April 2025.
Action Staffing, On Target Staffing and ProStaff Workforce Solutions did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but each has moved to dismiss the case. In court filings, attorneys for On Target Staffing argued that workers had falsified their immigration documents and would not have cleared HelloFresh’s verification system, and that no workers had ever complained about the work environment. The plaintiffs’ lawsuit disputes the staffing agencies’ claim that HelloFresh offered direct employment to all workers.
A judge granted the staffing agencies’ requests to dismiss claims brought under New Jersey’s Human Trafficking Prevention, Protection, and Treatment Act, but allowed the plaintiffs to file an amended complaint specifying individual plaintiffs and defendants — the document now before the court.
Lauren Herman, an attorney with Make the Road New Jersey representing the workers, said complaints went unresolved as workers were passed between the company and the agencies. “When people would raise complaints about what they were suffering, what supervisors were doing, they were bounced back and forth between HelloFresh and the staffing agencies with very little resolution, so there was really no place for people to go with these complaints,” Herman said.
Michael Scimone, a partner at Outten and Golden also representing the workers, said the case illustrates how immigration enforcement can be used to suppress complaints. “I think this lawsuit really illustrates what happens when you have effectively a two-tier labor force in the economy where we have the kind of aggressive immigration enforcement that’s happening right now that leaves people feeling so vulnerable that employers can hold their immigration status over their heads in this way and use that as a tool to exploit them,” Scimone said.
In December 2024, the U.S. Department of Labor announced an investigation into a different staffing agency at a HelloFresh facility in Illinois over allegations that migrant children were working at the facility. HelloFresh said it terminated its relationship with that agency upon learning of the allegations.
In a separate statement, HelloFresh said it “maintains robust anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies governed by our Employee Handbook and Global Code of Ethics” backed by mandatory training and multiple reporting channels, including a 24/7 confidential hotline for anonymous complaints. “Our frontline workforce is the foundation of our company, and ensuring a safe, fair, and respectful workplace is our highest priority,” the company said.