Jimmy John’s Beats Class Action Bid In “No Poach” Suit

Jimmy John’s dodged a bid for class action status in a federal court in Illinois by the employees leading an antitrust challenge to a “no poach” agreement that previously prohibited the sandwich chain’s franchise locations from recruiting one another’s workers.

Judge Nancy J. Rosenstengel declined to certify the case as a class action July 30, citing reasons similar to those offered by the federal judge in Chicago who ruled against McDonald’s  workers in a similar case two days earlier.

Plaintiff Donald Conrad claims that the franchises of the restaurant orchestrated a conspiracy among its owners to suppress the wages of more than 550,000 employees by agreeing not to hire each other’s workers. Conrad is seeking to represent a nationwide Class of every employee who worked at a Jimmy John’s restaurant for a period of four years.

Read More: Jimmy John’s to appeal no-poach ruling

The defendant argues in its motion that there are “intractable intra-class conflicts” between Conrad the Class Members that he would like to represent as well as between the employees within the Class.

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