AT&T Wireless Facing Lawsuit

Attorneys from Dallas' Law Offices of Jeffrey H. Rasansky say that they have filed a federal lawsuit seeking class-action status against AT&T Wireless Services on behalf of hundreds of Texas employees who allegedly have been denied overtime pay.

"This case represents exactly the type of scenario that's prohibited by the Fair Labor Standards Act," says Jeremi Young, an attorney with the Rasansky firm. "What we've seen here are low-level employees basically being forced to work off the clock so the company could reap bigger profits." The lawsuit filed today in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division, alleges that managers at the AT&T Wireless call center in Plano regularly required employees to work more than 40 hours per week without paying them for all the overtime hours worked.

"It's hard to imagine that this type of conduct is still going on in workplaces today but that's apparently what we have here," says attorney Jeff Rasansky, co-counsel on the case and founder of the Rasansky firm. "Unfortunately, we have no reason to believe that these violations were limited solely to the Plano facility. This lawsuit is important for every AT&T Wireless employee in the country whose timesheets have been altered, or who have worked off the clock just to keep their jobs."

Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, employers typically must pay employees a mandated hourly minimum wage, and time-and-a-half for every hour they work in excess of 40 hours per week. Mr. Young says many employees at the AT&T Wireless call center regularly had their timesheets altered, and that they were required to work through breaks and lunch without pay.

Last week T-Mobile USA reached a US$4.78 million settlement with the Department of Labor for failing to provide overtime pay to more than 20,500 employees who allegedly worked off the clock on a regular basis.

According to the New York-based Direct Marketing Association, there are approximately 6 million Americans currently working in telephone-oriented marketing, including more than 430,000 in Texas alone."

Posted to the site on 2nd December 2003