DirecTV Inc. might be facing a big wage and hour lawsuit against it in California following its decision to change the way it handles customer service calls. The proposed class action lawsuit claims that the cable company forced its customers to work through breaks in their service and rest periods without compensation, which directly contravenes California labor laws.
According to the lawsuit, the original contract provided that customers are entitled to at least thirty minutes of free service per week and up to one hundred minutes of free entertainment per month. But, according to the complaint, the satellite company changed this policy in May, 2021. According to the lawsuit, the change meant that customers were required to work during breaks or else receive no compensation.
Class Action Lawsuit on Payroll Taxes Forced by Directv
Directv had previously argued that the new policy was legally inflexible because it didn’t allow customers to work longer than the contract allowed. However, the latest legal maneuver represents a different story altogether. The class action lawsuit points out that, as if the original class action lawsuit had been granted class-action status, Directv was then able to force its customers to work through their contractual breaks and rest periods.
This means that the suit, now heading towards a class-action certification, will most likely involve Directv customers who have either been forced to work or have otherwise suffered financial losses as a result of Directv’s policy.
The class action lawsuit is the latest in what has become an increasingly litigious Directv case.
A few months ago, Directv was hit with a securities fraud case brought against it by the San Francisco examiner who handled the satellite system’s installation. In that case, the examiner alleged that Directv’s programming provided inappropriate messages about changing rates and other matters. A former top Directv executive had also been put on the witness stand to testify about the company’s finances. At that point, it looked as if Directv was facing more class action suits than ever before.
But that wasn’t all that happened. Earlier this month, a new set of class action lawsuits were filed against Directv over the costs it charged for its Directv Broadband services. At the heart of those lawsuits is a contention that Directv charged higher rates for its bundled packages than it offered to customers who purchased their own broadband modems and routers on their own.
As a class, Directv customers were entitled to at least some of that money back, the way the FCC intended for consumers to be treated when buying wireless services from carriers. But the FCC did not apply that same regulation to the charges for Directv itself.
Further fueling the class action lawsuit at hand is the claim that Directv has been putting its employees on the payroll, without paying them, for amounts of time that overlapped with their regular hours of work.
This type of situation has been shown to occur in other industries as well, and it’s not an uncommon practice in the telecom and communications industry. In that case, the Federal Trade Commission decided to sue a telecom company, arguing that it was guilty of a “booking error,” when it approved the wrong tariff for a telecom contractor working for Directv.
That contractor was paying his bills on time, but because he was put on the payroll at the same time as Directv employees who were working the same hours he wasn’t receiving payment for those hours. This class action lawsuit has been extended to cover a second company, and could easily extend to dozens of similar situations.
Directv has strongly denied that it engages in any wrongdoing.
Spokespersons for Directv have maintained that employees are entitled to the same wages and benefits as other employees of Directv who don’t work the same hours. Nevertheless, class action lawsuits like the one against Directv continue to surface. If Directv truly is guilty of such practices, it would follow that any individual who’s paid for work he never performed can be forced to reimburse those funds from the company, and there may even be legal ramifications for forcing an unwilling employee to repay money he didn’t receive.
The class action lawsuit may be the opportunity that Directv has been waiting for to solidify its reputation as a company willing to be held accountable for its actions. With so many subscribers still tied up in the hope that Directv will finally address its ballooning costs, and with so many more individuals receiving hefty paychecks each month, any shift in customer mentality may very well be worth watching.
