Outside Plant Technicians Sue Cablevision Systems NYC, Allege Unpaid Wages

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Twenty-four plaintiffs who work out of Cablevision’s three Brooklyn facilities have filed a proposed class and collective action that alleges the below defendants failed to properly calculate the regular rates of pay for outside plant technicians and/or network technicians and thusly owes unpaid “gap time” and overtime wages for time the employees spent working off the clock during unpaid half-hour meal breaks:

• Cablevision Systems New York City Corporation
• Cablevision Systems Corporation
• CSC Holdings, LLC
• Altice USA, Inc. (whose parent, Altice N.V. owns Cablevision Systems Corporation)
• Altice Technical Services US Corp.

The 40-page lawsuit, which cites potential Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) violations, notes individuals who work out of the defendants’ Brooklyn facilities serve a significantly higher volume of customers than their counterparts across the tristate area. Proposed class members, the case says, typically arrive at their bases of operation and are given their daily assignments, which normally include three or four different jobs the case says take, on average, a minimum of four hours to complete. The alleged FLSA issues seemingly stem from, among other factors mentioned in the complaint, cable outages, which take priority over more routine duties, and unforeseeable problems that often prevent jobs from being finished.

“The intensity of the work, the length of the jobs and the unpredictability ensures that [proposed class members] frequently cannot stop for an uninterrupted, 30-minute lunch break,” the case claims, asserting that the plaintiffs work throughout lunch without pay almost every day.

To meet demanding daily productivity requirements while at the same time provide customers with adequate service, outside plant technicians are forced to work more than 40 hours per week under threat of disciplinary action, the lawsuit alleges. More often than not, outside plant technicians skip their 30-minute lunch breaks entirely, the case adds.

All told, the lawsuit argues the defendants, despite being well aware of the unpredictable nature and “extreme” demands of the plaintiffs’ jobs, had knowledge of the fact that proposed class members simply do not have time to take lunch breaks, yet failed to correct their policies.