Wellfleet employees await response to lawsuit over pay

About 1,500 former employees of a Las Vegas telemarketing company are hoping and waiting to receive back pay.

The U.S. Department of Labor filed a lawsuit against Wellfleet Communications Oct. 7, accusing the company of failing to pay minimum wage and overtime to the workers.

“If we prevail we’re seeking back wages and an equal amount of liquidated damages,” said Laura Bremer, a senior trial attorney with the Department of Labor. “Basically (liquidated damages would be) double the amount due, and we would seek injunctive relief to ensure that the employers are complying with the Fair Labor Standards Act.”

The complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas 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, according to the complaint.

Patricia Ballew, who worked at Wellfleet Communications for about two months in 2014, said she estimates there were at least two weeks during which she had zero take-home pay.

“The last week I quit — they had a board up there where they would put up your sales — I had six deals up there, and I went home with nothing,” Ballew said.

Taz-shai Smith, who said she worked at Wellfleet Communications for about four months, said she received checks for $0 from the company.

“Whatever deals I made is what I got paid. There were some weeks when I come home with literally $25, $35, $50,” Smith said. “The most I would have is $100 a week.”

Ballew said she received a one-page letter in the mail from Wellfleet Communications around Oct. 21.

“It just said that they’ve been notified that they have to take care of the hours we worked,” Ballew said. She said there was a check box asking if she would accept $8.25 for the hours she worked during her time at the company. She said she checked the box and mailed her response in a return envelope.

Smith said she did not receive such a letter.

An attorney representing Wellfleet Communications declined to comment for this story, but Bremer said if former employees did get such a letter asking if they would accept a settlement, that is concerning.

“This is our lawsuit. It’s a lawsuit brought by the DOL,” she said. “Once we bring a case, it supersedes the employee’s individual rights to bring their own action. I don’t see how they could settle our lawsuit behind our backs.”

Wellfleet has until Jan. 3 to respond to the complaint.

Bremer 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.

Contact Nicole Raz at nraz@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4512. Follow @JournalistNikki on Twitter.