In 2007, Dell closed its call center in Roseburg not long after some employees sued over unpaid overtime (previous blog here). Last year, that lawsuit gained class action status involving multiple call centers and alleged unscrupulous business practices (previous blog here). Turns out that Dell quietly settled last month. From today's Roseburg News-Review...
A settlement agreement was filed Sept. 30 in U.S. District Court in Eugene. The agreement came two months before the deadline for lawyers on both sides of the class action suit to submit their pretrial motions to the court.
Terms of the agreement — which affected 1,406 call center workers from Roseburg, Idaho, Texas, Oklahoma and Tennessee — were not made public. U.S. Magistrate Thomas Coffin sealed the judgment in the case, following a request from the attorneys.Neither lawyers for the plaintiffs or the defendants returned calls seeking comment. It's standard for the parties in employment suits to sign confidentiality agreements in which they're barred from divulging the terms of the agreement.
...
The lawsuit involved only full-time telephone representatives. Coffin ruled that part-time workers, who are covered under different employment rules than full-time workers, could still sue but had to do so individually.
Evidently things were bad enough that Dell chose to buy the silence of its former employees. That never smells like justice...rather like when school districts would pay molesting teachers to leave quietly rather than prosecuting them. That may be cheaper and/or quicker, but it doesn't necessarily motivate the needed changes.
I once again submit that closed settlements like this shouldn't be allowed in our legal system.
Comments