Las Vegas telemarketer sued for shorting workers’ pay
The U.S. Department of Labor announced Thursday that the agency filed a lawsuit against a Las Vegas telemarketing company Oct. 7 and accused it of failing to pay minimum wage and overtime to about 1,500 employees.
The complaint filed in the District of Nevada court outlines that Wellfleet Communications employees routinely received less than the $7.25 per hour federal minimum wage. While an employee working 32 hours in a week should receive at least the minimum wage of $232 for their work, Wellfleet employees routinely received less than half that amount, including instances of employees receiving $50 or as little as $3 for an entire week of work.
Laura Bremer, a senior trial attorney with the Department of Labor, said a Wellfleet employee submitted a complaint in 2015, prompting an investigation by the department. Records obtained during the investigation showed that 1,500 employees between at least 2012 and 2015 were illegally misclassified as independent contractors.
Bremer said Wellfleet required workers to sign contracts stating they were independent workers “to deprive their employees of their hard earned wages.”
Wellfleet is not the first Las Vegas call center-type company engaging in this practice, Bremer said.
“There’s a concern that misclassification is all too common, not just in telemarketing, but it’s something we are working on generally,” she said.
An attorney representing Wellfleet declined a request for comment.
Contact Nicole Raz at nraz@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4512. Follow @JournalistNikki on Twitter.
