PROVIDENCE – A federal judge has awarded more than $2 million to seven cable installers who worked for a company that installed Cox services and accused their former employer of failing to pay them fair wages and overtime.
U.S. District Court Judge Mary S. McElroy on Friday awarded the men compensatory and liquidated damages, plus interest and attorney’s fees, against M & M Communications Inc., a local company contracted by Cox Rhode Island Telecom LLC to install services.
The judge’s ruling came Friday following a five-day trial this past summer in U.S. District Court. The amounts the men are to receive range from $210,322 to $60,191, according to the judge’s order. Another $35,000 in penalties were doled out, with half headed to the state Department of Labor and the remainder divided evenly among the seven workers.
The cable installers had argued that the wage theft they experienced was a symptom of a much larger industry-wide problem: the unlawful exploitation of cable installers by cable providers — such as Cox, Verizon, Comcast and others — by using outside cable installing companies who misclassify workers as independent contractors, according Richard A. Sinapi, the lead lawyer in the case. Classifying workers as such is intended to save the company money by not paying employees for all hours worked, overtime pay, payroll taxes, workers compensation insurance, and other employee benefits.
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