EA Workers Readying a Class Action Lawsuit
With the celebrated blog entry of the EA spouse complaining about long hours and no over-time pay reverberating through the internet. Reporters have found out a Partner at Schubert & Reed LLP is pursuing a class action lawsuit against EA for improperly classifying employees, so they wouldn't have to pay overtime.
"On July 29, 2004, a class action lawsuit was filed against Electronic Arts Inc. ("EA"). This communication responds to earlier email communications from EA management regarding the litigation. The lawsuit alleges that EA improperly classified some of its employees, including 'animators,' 'modelers,' 'texture artists,' 'lighters,' 'background effects artists' and 'environmental artists' as exempt from overtime, and therefore failed to pay those employees overtime compensation. Plaintiff's action seeks statutory penalties, damages, restitution, and injunctive relief.
"EA denies plaintiff's claim. It is EA's position that it treats its employees fairly and lawfully, and that it has properly classified its employees within the meaning of the law. The plaintiff is seeking to bring this lawsuit on behalf of himself and to represent a proposed class of current and former EA employees as a class action. The Court has not yet certified this case as a class action"
"If the case is certified, members of the class will be notified as directed by the Court, and may be given the opportunity to be excluded from the class ("opting out"), or to hire their own lawyers to represent them"
"EA will not retaliate against employees for exercising legal rights, including by participating in the proposed class action."
Sad to see white-collar workers slave away 90 hour weeks, while executives
sell stock worth tens of millions in the past year. I have nothing against hard work and long hours, but I do think engineers deserve to get paid more for it.
Of course we don't know how much stock option compensation these engineers also received for their efforts. But
shown here it's obvious EA executives are not hurting and with over two billion dollars of cash on their balance sheet and no long term debt, they sure can afford to pay a few more shickels.
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