A federal district court in Midland, Texas has conditionally certified a case filed by oilfield workers against their employer for unpaid overtime. \u00a0Plaintiffs were employed by Rig Power and M3P (collectively, “Defendants”) as field technicians to perform manual labor related to the transportation, operation, and maintenance of oilfield equipment. \u00a0In the lawsuit, Plaintiffs allege that they routinely worked more than 40 hours per week and that Defendants failed to compensate them at the required overtime rate for such work. Plaintiffs specifically allege that Rig Power paid a fixed amount for each day an employee worked more than eight hours, regardless of how many additional hours the employee worked on those days or how many additional hours the employee worked in a given week. Plaintiffs further allege that Rig Power subsequently stopped paying this “daily bonus” due to the downturn in the oil and gas industry, resulting in Plaintiffs being paid no compensation of any kind for hours worked above 40 in a given week. Plaintiffs further allege that similarly situated field technicians were also not paid overtime for hours worked in excess of 40 hours per week.<\/p>\n
The Plaintiffs filed a motion to conditionally certify the case as a collective action, meaning that they were asking the Court to allow other Field Technicians who worked for Rig Power within the past three years to be given notice of the lawsuit so that they could join the suit and seek to recover their unpaid overtime if they elected to do so.\u00a0 The Court granted this motion.\u00a0 In doing so, the Court found that the Plaintiffs had shown \u201csimilarity of compensation schemes, as supported by nine declarations, across the country is a substantial allegation that field technicians were victims of a Rig Power decision or policy that potentially affects a nationwide putative class.\u201d\u00a0 The Court further found \u201cthat field technicians employed by Rig Power were victims of a single decision or policy\u2014namely a policy to pay employees a “daily bonus” in lieu of proper overtime compensation\u2014to warrant conditional certification.” \u00a0The Court further found that \u201cPlaintiffs have carried their burden of making substantial allegations that field technicians at Rig Power are similarly situated in terms of job requirements and terms of compensation.\u00a0 The Court conditionally certified a class defined as \u00a0“All field technicians employed by Rig Power within three years of the date of [the Court\u2019s] order.” \u00a0The Court ordered Rig Power to turn over to Plaintiff\u2019s Counsel, Josh Borsellino, the names, last known addresses, and dates of employment of all field technicians who Rig Power employed within three years of the Court\u2019s order. \u00a0A link to the Court’s order on the motion to certify may be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Since the Court granted the motion to certify on December 10, twenty additional Field Technicians for Rig Power have opted to join the lawsuit.\u00a0 Because there were five original plaintiffs and eleven opt-ins prior to the motion to certify, there are currently thirty six Field Technicians who have elected to join this lawsuit.<\/p>\n About the author:<\/strong> Josh Borsellino represents oilfield workers in the Midland area and across Texas\u00a0in cases involving overtime pay. \u00a0If you work or worked within the past three years in the oilfield or in the oil and gas industry and have questions about whether you may be entitled to unpaid overtime, call Josh Borsellino at 817.908.9861 or submit a case inquiry at http:\/\/www.dfwcounsel.com\/contact\/<\/a> for a free consultation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A federal district court in Midland, Texas has conditionally certified a case filed by oilfield workers against their employer for unpaid overtime. \u00a0Plaintiffs were employed by Rig Power and M3P (collectively, “Defendants”) as field technicians to perform manual labor related to the transportation, operation, and maintenance of oilfield equipment. \u00a0In the lawsuit, Plaintiffs allege that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3886,3895,3896,3897],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfwcounsel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfwcounsel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfwcounsel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfwcounsel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfwcounsel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dfwcounsel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfwcounsel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfwcounsel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfwcounsel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}