New Workplace, Old Fight
Workers Struggle for Overtime Pay as Firms Seek to Boost Productivity While Cutting Costs By Kirsten Downey, Washington Post, August 31, 2003 Abstract Dozens of lawsuits have been filed across the United States, alleging that employers are violating state and federal labor laws by not paying employees the overtime wages owed them, and in some cases not paying them at all, for hours worked beyond the 40-hour workweek. On August 7, 2003, AIMCO - the largest owner of residential apartment building communities in the country - was sued in federal court in Washington, D.C. by seven current and former building maintenance staff workers who were the subject of a policy denying them, and thousands of others around the country, overtime pay for work performed while on call during nights and weekends to respond to tenant service requests. Linda Hulse, lead plaintiff in the case against AIMCO, is quoted in the excerpt below about AIMCO's alleged overtime abuses. Joseph M. Sellers, who heads the civil rights and employment practice at Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll P.L.L.C. in Washington, D.C. and represents the plaintiffs in this case, including Linda Hulse, was interviewed by the author during the preparation of the article. Excerpt: Hulse, a maintenance engineer at a 100-acre apartment complex in Plainsboro, N.J., said she already felt strained over the past five years, as the owner of the complex cut its maintenance staff from 11 workers to three and expected them to work 60 hours a week, sometimes more. Her frequent pleas for more help had been ignored because executives felt constant pressure to shave labor costs, she said. Then the storm swept through, and she and the two men she supervised worked for 72 hours clearing snow. She slept only about six hours total over three nights, she said. At one point, she noticed tears were streaming down the faces of her co-workers, 55- and 48-year-old men. "We were crying; we couldn't go on anymore," Hulse said. "But you couldn't walk away. . . . It was surreal. Everybody kept trudging along because you have to pay your mortgage, you have to pay your rent." Hulse, 40, became ill and was hospitalized. While she was recuperating, her employer, Aimco, a Denver-based real estate investment trust, fired her for failing to report for duty, she said. Early this month she joined a lawsuit against Aimco, alleging it broke federal labor laws for several years by demanding long hours and refusing to pay its employees overtime. Aimco officials, however, said that the lawsuit has no merit and that they pay overtime when employees work extra hours. Business groups and labor activists agree that many companies, pressured to hold down costs in a globally competitive environment, often ask employees to work longer than the standard American 40-hour workweek. And when the work is voluntary and fairly compensated, they say, that's a good thing -- for the employees who want the extra income and for the economy in general. But labor experts also worry about the danger for exploitation in a slow economy, as companies continue to slash thousands of jobs every month and many workers feel they can't afford to say no to employers' requests. In the United States, unlike many other industrialized countries, there are no federal laws limiting the number of hours that employees are compelled to work. But the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 set a workplace standard of 40 hours a week by requiring employers to pay non-management workers time-and-a-half for every extra hour worked in one week. Today, dozens of lawsuits across the country -- including ones against Wal-Mart, Geico and other firms -- allege that employers are violating state and federal labor laws by not paying employees the overtime wages owed them, and in some cases not paying them at all, for hours worked beyond the 40-hour workweek. |
