Anyone ever dealt with a lawsuit against an employer?

For the time being I am going to leave everything universally labeled as to not put anything about the specific company I work with out in the public. I work in Oil and Gas and while a lot of the weird schedules and pay periods you see are kosher there are for sure many companies I have worked for over the years that illegally compensated you.

I started working for my company last year on November 13th. I am coming up on a year and while none of the specifics of our pay periods were discussed in my offer letter, the basics such as hourly rate and mileage/per-diem were disclosed. Not a week after I hired on they started changing things they promised and it's been nothing but down hill since. I have come to the conclusion that after my calendar year with the company is up I will be looking for work elsewhere. So after a few recent events at work I believe I have decided I might try to start a Class Action Lawsuit on the company.

I'm trying to keep this short and sweet so lemme skim the details. Since I have signed my offer letter they have:

1) Cut my pay by 10%
2) Started limiting the amount of mileage we can claim (this is regulated already to make sure we don't lie on our mileage but now they won't even pay all of our actual driven mileage)
3) Split our work week to avoid paying overtime

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1- The pay cut was legal as we had to sign a paper agreeing to it, so that's not a big deal but still a disappointment.

2- I think the mileage bottle necking is a breach of contract as our offer letter does not say anything about mileage claims being limited. It merely states that they will pay mileage at the standard cost per the company policy which is 0.54 cents a mile.

3- We work a 14 day consecutive period, so them splitting our work week is already illegal and not paying us for any overtime over 80 hours worked in the consecutive period is illegal. They fail to mention this to any new employees and you don't find out until your first time card submit.

Now I've been in the oilfield for a long time and have dealt with this kind of crap before. Most people also just deal with it and have accepted it as normal, although I have seen plenty of lawsuits against companies pulling this crap. I am one of those who normally shrugs my shoulders and keeps my mouth shut in fear of retaliation, which again is also illegal. This company though has rubbed me wrong in a lot of ways and after requesting an extra 2 days off (mind you we have personal time and vacation time we can use) last days off due to my truck being in the shop and not wanting to get into a rental car I was told that if they had to find someone to cover for me to not even bother coming back to work. I gave them nearly 2 weeks notice on this and they contacted me a day before I came back to work and told me that.

Another case that happened this hitch, which also could be grounds for a lawsuit, is we encountered H2S gas on our location. We are not setup for H2S gas and after notifying our safety department and supervisor they at first were on our side and planned to get us monitors on location the next day. Those never showed and we spoke to the safety department again, the second response was basically them turning it around on us and yet here we are a week later with ZERO SAFETY EQUIPMENT FOR H2S. If you don't know about H2S gas it is a very deadly gas that can kill within a matter of seconds to minutes after being inhaled.

There many other small subtle things that have happened mainly political crap I don't tend to get my hands in but these three recent events have now got me steaming. Anyone have any thoughts on the matter? Lawsuit? Report to Labor Board?

Sorry for the long winded post...

 

Firstly, sounds like you work on a Rig, so you probably live near us. Lots of friends and family work on a rig, it's a rough gig, I feel your pain.

Secondly, the H2S is nothing to joke with, and they aren't exaggerating when they say it kills in seconds. Anything over 10ppm (undetectable by humans, need the little Orange monitors to clip on your chest) is against OSHA standards. Getting them involved would not make your employer happy, but you're likely to get a response if you do.

Finally, I know of 2 people in the last few months that were fired as retaliation on whistle blowing. Seems like the big fancy "we just want to be safe, it's anonymous" is mostly just double speak to make people who aren't involved feel it's a reputable company. Tread lightly, with a plan to be fired for your principals.

Either way, the world needs more people who take the risk to expose this kinda crap, I support you, but to be fair I don't lose my job if I just support you, so you have much more on the table than me. Good luck friend.

 

You are correct sir I am on a rig, not directly on the rig but as 3rd Party. I have been on rigs since 2005, I have roughnecked and moved all the way up to Assistant Driller but with this recent downturn I took this job for more stability. This company, to my surprise, does not relate to the oilfield very well...The H2S things surely does piss me off and also the new standard starting this year I believe is now anything over 1 PPM is considered to much to work around and you are required to don proper PPE. The company man on location is trying to sweep the recent exposure under the carpet and is one of the reasons we contacted our supervisor and saf. dept....Then they try to turn that crap around on us is Bull shit. I have infact considered phoning OSHA and reporting this location, rig and drilling company (along with my company) but that would surely get me black balled. It may also give me a damn good lawsuit but I don't have the money to fight something like that out of pocket.

I live in San Antonio, TX and am working out of Wheeler, TX/Elk City, OK right now.

As for loosing my job, I plan on quitting by the end of the year anyways so I am not concerned with that. I tallied up what I have been shorted in this calendar year and it came out to $10,800. Thanks for the support!

 

Jeeze. Hopefully someone else chimes in with more helpful information. I know a lot of those guys out there are just counting their days to retirement. Take care bud.

 

You could start with the labor board/employment commission and then move on to a lawsuit if you weren't satisfied with your results at that point. I wouldn't look for a class action lawsuit. While the threat may scare your company into settling with you, moving forward with a class action won't do much to rectify your situation. Class actions are there to punish the wrongdoer and get attorneys paid - the "victims" hardly ever get what they deserve.

 

Update: Alright so I contacted WHD (wages and hours division) and it sounds to me like this is going to be a large grey area. She explained it to me that they will look at it from a week to week basis (within our designated payroll) and while maybe over the phone they are not allowed to give advice it seems she was very neutral in her responses and kept saying things like "will just have to review the case and what you submit" or "we will look at it per pay period". Even after quoting to her what the law states and how they are clearly manipulating our start day to avoid overtime she still gave me same neutral responses. So I'll just have to submit it but I feel it won't go anywhere, which means I'd prolly have to lawyer up. That is something I'm sure I'm not prepared to do and I know I wouldn't be able to cover the fees or make all the court appearances. In the end I might just have to SMH and walk away 10k short.