Service and Installation Wage Laws

colorado mountainsTens of thousands of service technicians and installers work for cable, dish, appliance, security, and other industries supplying equipment and services to residential and commercial properties. Often, to increase their profit, the companies that hire service technicians and installers will look for ways to cheat workers out of their wages. The top wage violations in the service/installation industry are:

  • Failing to pay cable installers overtime for all hours worked in excess of 12 per day or 40 per week. Even salaried service and installation workers usually are entitled to overtime pay. To avoid overtime, employers in this industry often will illegally average hours worked over two weeks and pay overtime hours as “comp time”.
  • Treating installers as independent contractors to avoid the cost of overtime, insurance and payroll taxes. Very few workers in this industry truly qualify as independent contractors.
  • “Shaving” or under-reporting worked hours to avoid paying for those hours. Often this takes the form of automatic deductions for meal/rest breaks that never were taken or that were less than thirty minutes of uninterrupted time.
  • Not paying workers for certain tasks performed before, during or after their regular shift such as driving to the job (or between jobs), employee meetings, training programs, putting on, taking off, cleaning or maintaining equipment or gear and paperwork. Often employers illegally claim that this work is “off the clock”.
  • Paying per diem instead of wages to avoid overtime pay.
  • Paying a flat daily or job rate without consideration of the number of hours worked and the requirement to pay overtime.
  • Making workers pay for their uniform (and dry-cleaning), and/or other equipment.
  • Failing to provide meal and rest breaks.

If your employer is violating the service/installation overtime pay laws, you (and other employees) may be entitled to thousands of dollars of back pay. Please contact us for a free and confidential case evaluation or simply to learn more about service/installation workers and the overtime pay laws.