NAPA, CA — A group of fire restoration workers in California recently filed a class action unpaid overtime lawsuit against their employer over allegations that the company failed to adhere to state and federal labor and wage laws, including failure to pay overtime to workers. The lawsuit names Satsuma, Alabama-based Southern Response Services and Ft. Worth, Texas-based Interstate Restoration LLC as defendants and seeks recovery of unpaid wages, penalties and interest, and injunctive relief to force the out-of-state companies to comply with California’s wage and hour laws.
According to the unpaid overtime lawsuit, filed in Sonoma County Superior Court, the defendants violated California’s wage and hour laws when they failed to pay workers one and a half times their average hourly rate of pay when working more than 40 hours in a week. The workers would gather in parking lots in Sonoma and Napa counties where the defendants would take the group into the field to perform fire clean up after the Tubbs Fire in October, 2017.
The plaintiffs claim they went out to work with no time clock or recordkeeping system and that the defendants would simply put down arbitrary start and stop times that did not include all of their actual hours worked. While out at work, the employees faced mistreatment and ridicule from their supervisors, who would use racial slurs on a frequent basis. Sadly, some of the workers even lost their own homes in the disaster while they worked long hours helping to clean up the homes of other victims.
Furthermore, the complaint alleges that the defendants engaged in unfair business practices by forcing the plaintiffs to accept their earnings with prepaid debit cards that carried $3 to use instead of a bank card. Recent court rulings have held that employers cannot force employees to accept wages on pay cards and must provide the option of a paper paycheck. The alleging unfair business practices was brought on behalf of thousands of California workers under the state’s labor and business and practices codes
Fire Restoration Worker Unpaid Overtime Lawsuit
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