Oil Rig Workers Launch Lawsuit Over Hours Paid

A plaintiff has initiated an oil rig workers class action lawsuit on behalf of himself and other similarly situated against Amplify Energy Corp. Plaintiff Howard T. alleges that violations of California law have occurred and that the rights of oil rig workers were trampled.

For this reason, he initiated an oil rig workers class action lawsuit as a result of alleged violations of California wage and hour laws. According to the oil rig workers lawsuit, the defendants provide services to drilling operations off of the coast of California, on the outer continental shelf.

The oil rig workers lawsuit says that the defendants use these hourly employees who complete their jobs on oil platforms and go back and forth between these locations when required to do so.

The plaintiff says hourly workers are required to perform their work in multiple day shifts that begin and end in California and are also spent traveling back from, to or between oil platforms, or directly at the oil platforms themselves. The hitches, which is the term used to refer to the oil rig workers’ multiple day shifts, begin on California ground.

Howard says employees have to wait for a vessel to transport them to an oil platform. According to the oil rig workers lawsuit, defendants require that the employees attend safety briefings after which time they can board their vessel and travel to an oil platform located on the outer continental shelf.

As alleged in the oil rig workers lawsuit, on some occasions the employees have to travel both to and from their designated platforms via helicopter, which is a similar process to those trips boarding a vessel. However, the difference here is the length of the trip, Howard says.

Employees are not able to take their own helicopter or vessel to reach the platform and therefore must rely on the transportation provided by the defendants. Howard points out the employees are not realistically able to leave their helicopter, vessel or oil platform as hourly employees.

According to the oil rig workers lawsuit, California law requires the payment for wages for every hour worked. California employers are also legally obligated to pay overtime wages for hours worked in excess of 40 in one work week or 8 in one day.

Furthermore, all hours worked in excess of 12 per day leads to double time premium wages. The oil rig workers lawsuit says California law defines hours worked as the time during which the employee is subject to the control of the employer.

According to other lawsuits named in the oil rig workers proposed class action lawsuit, the time that the employee who is subject to an employer’s control is subject to compensation, even if the employee didn’t perform any work during that time.

The oil rig workers lawsuit says that the defendants violated key principles and rules of California wage and hour law, since the hourly employees were restrained to their workplace for the entire length of their hitches.

The oil rig workers lawsuit says that the defendants had a policy of paying the hourly employees for 13 hours each day, which included one hour for the changeover in a 12-hour shift. However, the oil rig workers lawsuit says that this does not fully compensate the employees for all of the hours that they truly worked.

The Oil Rig Workers Lawsuit is Case No. 2:18-cv-09541, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

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