San Francisco Superior Court Judge John K. Stewart approved the $17.25 million final settlement of a class action complaint against energy giant PG&E. The class of employees filed suit against PG&E seeking compensation for unpaid overtime hours worked. The workers alleged, among other things, that they were misclassified as salary exempt meaning that they were not subject to California's strict overtime laws. As such, they worked many overtime hours without receiving any additional compensation other than their base salary.
The case, Conley v. Pacific Gas & Electric Co., was originally filed in March, 2000. Yes, 2000, which means it took 9 years for the case to resolve, an excruciating amount of time for the Plaintiffs and their attorneys to have an ongoing case. I have handled several wage and hour class actions during the last three years, so I am fully aware of the complexities of class actions and the amount of time it takes to litigate them. The biggest impediment to settling a class action is that once a class action is filed, the court must approve the settlement. As a result, the Defendant must offer enough money to satisfy the court that the settlement is fair and reasonable. Additionally, the Defendant is unable to settle with just the named Plaintiff and then dismiss the remainder of the complaint. Consequently, Defendant companies typically aggressively defend class actions.
PG&E spokeswoman Jennifer Zerwer, in typical "big company settles big lawsuit" fashion, said in regards to the settlement "PG&E truly appreciates the 20,000 men and women who work every day to provide safe and reliable energy to our customers. They are our most important asset. We believe these employees were properly classified, according to California law. We are pleased we were able to come to a compromise that is fair to both our employees and our customers." Loosely translated, we fought like mad for as long as we could to defend this case, but in the end came to grips with the fact we misclassified our employees and settled before we got into any more trouble.
PG&E workers get $17.25 million in OT case, The Mercury News, July 31, 2009
