Safelite Settles Overtime Pay Class Action for $1.1 Million, Pending Court Approval
June 20, 2013

by Penny Stacey, pstacey@glass.com

A settlement has been reached in a class action suit filed against Safelite Auto Glass stemming from allegations related to overtime pay. According to court documents, Safelite has agreed to pay a total sum of $1,097,000 to be distributed among class members, as the result of an April 4 mediation session in the case. The settlement is pending court approval in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, according to a June 7 motion filed by the plaintiff in the case.

According to court documents, the settlement class “means all persons employed in California by [Safelite] as a windshield repair specialist or replacement technician between November 14, 2007, and June 3, 2013.”

The proposed settlement agreement notes that Safelite “has asserted defenses to the claims alleged in the class action [suit] and expressly denies each of the claims asserted against it and any and all liability arising out of the conduct and facts alleged in the class action.”

“Defendant nevertheless desires to settle the class action,” writes counsel for Safelite. “[Safelite] has concluded that further defense of the class action would be protracted and expensive. Substantial amounts of time, energy and resources of [Safelite] have been and, unless this settlement is made, will continue to be devoted to the defense of the claims asserted in the class action.”

Demetriot Lewis, who worked as a mobile windshield repair technician from April 2010 to December 2010 in the San Francisco Bay area, filed the suit originally, alleging that he was regularly scheduled to work eight hours per day, but that the company “did not pay [him] wages for all the hours [he] worked.”

“Defendant required plaintiff to clock in for work at a specified time, but regularly suffered or permitted [him] to work prior to the specified time for clocking in,” alleged Lewis in the original case. “Tasks that defendant knowingly allowed or required plaintiff to perform prior to the specified time for clocking in included calling customers; retrieving paperwork, supplies or equipment from defendant’s warehouse; attending meetings or taking tests at defendant’s warehouse; and driving to customer locations from defendant’s warehouse.”

Lewis further alleged that he was not paid for all of the hours he worked. He said that though the company sometimes paid him time and a half based on his $12 hourly rate of pay, the company did not factor the repair incentives that he sometimes received into the time-and-a-half rate.

The former technician also alleged that he often was not provided “the opportunity to take a duty-free meal period of 30 minutes,” and that his supervisors “would create or have [him] create false records purporting to reflect that plaintiff had taken a 30-minute meal period.”

Claims also included that Safelite required Lewis to purchase a GPS unit for use in his work, but did not reimburse him for the unit.

The settlement is scheduled to be reviewed by the court on July 12.

At press time, Safelite officials had not yet responded to requests for comment.

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