A federal court in Western Washington has ordered DirecTV (NYSE: T) to distribute $395,000 in back pay to 147 installers.
According to the Seattle Times, the U.S. District Court for Western Washington issued its consent judgement after the U.S. Department of Labor found DirecTV and its Kent, Wash.-based subcontractor, Advanced Information Systems, violated the Fair Labor Standards Act.
The workers were allegedly not paid for overtime or travel time.
DirecTV reps have yet to respond to FierceInstaller's inquiry for comment.
Earlier this month, DirecTV and its subcontractor reached an agreement with the Labor Department on the 2012 case. The satellite operator agreed to comply with the Fair Labor Act and to review contracts with its installation partners across the country.
A very relevant portion of this case for installers and their operator clients: DirecTV had argued that since it doesn't directly employ Advanced Information Systems' workers, it wasn't on the hook for overtime. But the court found that DirecTV was a "joint employer" to the workers.
"While we believe we, and our current third-party contractors, have fully complied with the wage and hour laws in our DirecTV operations in Washington, we are pleased to put this dispute behind us," a DirecTV representative said in a statement to the Times.
For more:
- read this Seattle Times story
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