On December 17, 2014, a former field technician of OneSource Building Technologies, Inc. (“OneSource”), filed a collective action lawsuit in Texas federal court on behalf of himself and all other similarly situated current and former field technicians seeking unpaid overtime wages and liquidated damages under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”). The suit alleges that OneSource violated the FLSA by classifying its field technicians as independent contractors, rather than employees, and failing to pay them full overtime wages when they worked more than forty hours in a workweek. According to the complaint, OneSource controlled the field technicians’ work in various ways including, but not limited to, the way it required them to report their hours, the location of their work assignments, the number of hours they worked, and the method by which technicians’ were required to complete their work.
The named plaintiff alleged that while he and the similarly situated field technicians were often required to work more than forty hours per week to complete their work assignments, they were not paid at the mandated time and one-half their regular rate of pay for their overtime hours. Rather, OneSource typically paid them a flat hourly rate (i.e. “straight time”), regardless of the number of hours they worked. The case against is entitled Salley v. OneSource Building Technologies, Inc. and was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division. The case number is 4:14-cv-03605.
Tim C. Selander, an attorney representing the plaintiff, stated “Companies that misclassify their workers as independent contractors not only avoid paying overtime wages to their workers, but they pass on their operating costs to workers while benefiting from reduced tax liability. The practice isn’t fair to workers, and it’s not fair to competing companies that play by the rules and properly classify workers as employees.”
The lawsuit was filed as a collective action and seeks to recover overtime pay for all current and former field technicians and those with similar job titles and duties employed by OneSource at any time within the past three years. The plaintiff is represented by Tim C. Selander and Paul J. Lukas of Nichols Kaster, PLLP, which has offices in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and San Francisco, California, and Brian D. Gonzales of The Law Offices of Brian D. Gonzales, PLLC in Fort Collins, Colorado. Additional information is available by contacting Nichols Kaster toll-free at (877) 344-4628.
