Satellite TV Installer Fights Wage Accusations
A contractor that installs and services DirecTV systems in Central and Eastern Massachusetts is facing pressure from unionizing employees to change the way it pays its staff.
About 70 employees who work out of Minnesota-based Multiband Corp.’s Avon office, covering the area from Worcester to Eastern Massachusetts, are in the process of negotiating their first union contract. At the same time, some of the employees have also filed a class action lawsuit claiming that the company’s compensation policies violate overtime wage laws.
Pay By The Piece
At issue is the company’s piece work system, which provides employees with a set payment of about $120 for each satellite installation and about $15 for each service call. Workers say company policies mean that if they spend an hour driving to a house to install a satellite dish only to find that it’s impossible to get reception, they aren’t paid for their time. And they say they get $15 for responding to a customer’s problem, whether it takes five minutes or three hours to fix.
James Mandel, CEO of Multiband, wrote in an e-mail to the Worcester Business Journal that employee compensation in the satellite television industry is largely based on piece work, and that his workers make a fair annual income.
Representatives from Verizon and Charter Communications, which offer competing services in the area, said their technicians are paid hourly wages. Verizon does all its installation and service work in-house, and Charter said it uses some subcontractors but that they don’t use a piece work system either.
“We see the contractors paying hourly wages,” said Tom Cohan, director of government relations at Charter.
The Multiband workers organized a union last year with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 103 and began negotiating a contract in August. At that time, their employer was a company called DirecTech. Multiband bought out much of DirecTech’s business, including the DirecTV installation work, in January of this year.
Bill Corley, who is in membership development for the union, said that the union wants to see Multiband move to a system of hourly wages, but so far the company has offered to pay only $10 an hour if the piece work system is dismantled.
“We’ve been meeting couple times a month, but it’s just a slow, drawn-out process,” he said.
But Mandel said negotiations are moving forward, with many aspects of a potential contract already hashed out. He said the company hopes to reach a final resolution soon. He also said Multiband already has union contracts at some other locations.
Replacement Workers
Corley also accused Multiband of “starving out” the unionized workers by bringing in crews from outside the state to do the more lucrative installation jobs. He said that’s likely a tactic to drive out the union, and that it wouldn’t be cost-effective to keep using the outside crews long-term.
But Mandel said the company hasn’t changed the percentage of its work that it subcontracts. He added that the National Labor Relations Board, which oversees union elections and negotiations, rejected a union allegation concerning the out-of-state crews.
While the contract negotiations move forward, employer and employees are also facing off in a class action lawsuit. Four workers filed the suit against DirecTech in May 2008, accusing the company of failing to pay overtime wages.
Robert W. Harnais, a partner in the Law Offices of Mahoney, Diamond & Harnais in Quincy, who is representing the workers in the suit, said they have a right to be paid time-and-a-half, even if they are on a piece work system. He said the company often has employees working more than 40 hours a week without fair compensation.
Both Harnais and Corley said they place some of the ultimate blame for Multiband’s behavior on DirecTV.
“These guys don’t drive trucks that say DirecTech,” said Harnais. “They drive trucks that say DirecTV.”
But Mandel said his company is exclusively responsible for all decisions about its employees’ pay and benefits. And DirecTV spokesman Robert Mercer said his company does not determine technicians’ pay scales or discuss the issue with its contractors. He said the company expects contractors to pay competitive rates and comply with all relevant workplace laws.
WBJ Web Partners
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments