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Landmark Overtime Pay Class Action Lawsuit Against IBM By Tech Workers Expands
March 14, 2006
San Francisco, CA -- Counsel for plaintiffs in the nationwide overtime pay class action lawsuit against International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) announced today that the suit has now expanded to include claims under Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New Jersey state law. The suit already included claims for overtime compensation under federal law for all workers in the United States as well as California and New York state law claims.
The growing group of named plaintiffs, seeking to represent tens of thousands of other current and former technical support workers, charges the computer giant with failure to properly pay overtime wages. Claims under other states’ laws may be added in the future.
IBM employs more than 300,000 workers; the proposed class includes tens of thousand of systems administrators, network technicians and other technical staff throughout the United States. “This case could result in one of the largest class action lawsuits in history, both in numbers of employees and total damages, ever filed against a corporation for failure to pay overtime wages,” said an attorney with Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, one of eight law firms representing the plaintiffs.
The amended class action complaint alleges violations of federal law on behalf of a nationwide class of IBM high tech workers as well as violations of the labor laws of California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey and New York on behalf of classes of IBM workers in each respective state. “Workers from anywhere in the United States are eligible to participate in the case as well,” explained Todd Jackson of Lewis, Feinberg, Renaker & Jackson, P.C.
The lawsuit charges that IBM deprives its employees who install, maintain, and support computer software and hardware by unlawfully characterizing them as “exempt” from state and federal labor law protections. The proposed classes consist of current and former IBM technical support workers with the primary duties of installing and/or maintaining computer software and hardware for IBM who were wrongly classified by the company as exempt from the overtime provisions of federal law and/or applicable state wage and hour laws.
The complaint in Rosenburg, et al. v. IBM, was originally filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco on January 24, 2006, and amended on March 13, 2006, by attorneys from Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP (San Francisco); Lewis Feinberg Renaker & Jackson, P.C. (Oakland), Rudy, Exelrod & Zieff, LLP (San Francisco); Outten & Golden LLP (New York); Spiro, Moss, Barness, Harrison & Barge, LLP (Los Angeles); Lee & Braziel, LLP (Dallas); Bruckner Burch, PLLC (Houston); and Goldstein, Demchak, Baller, Borgen & Dardarian (Oakland).
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