AsianWeek, Census 2000 Workers Seek Overtime Wages in Federal Lawsuit
By Andrew Chow
AsianWeek Staff Writer
Attorney Jack W. Lee has taken on supermarket chains, an insurance company and the city of San Francisco in class-action employment cases. Now he’s taking on the U.S. Department of Commerce in a lawsuit seeking hundreds of thousands of dollars in overtime back payments he claims have been wrongly withheld from employees of the Census 2000.
Though just 35 former Census 2000 employees have signed onto the class-action claim as of mid-January, Lee expects thousands of disgruntled census workers nationwide to follow suit once word of the litigation spreads. Last week, Lee’s San Francisco-based firm mailed 10,000 letters describing the lawsuit to former census workers throughout the country.
The result could propel court-ordered payouts into the “hundreds of millions” from the Commerce Department that oversees the Bureau of the Census, said Lee, 50, a native of Stockton, Calif. and a partner with Minami, Lew & Tamaki LLP.
Census administrators “were targeting a very vulnerable population here — people who are students, retired, homemakers — hoping those groups of people who didn’t need it as livelihood” wouldn’t raise a fuss, Lee said. “That was a recipe for disaster and it’s come home to roost now.”
The lawsuit, filed last August in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C., alleges the Census Bureau “made a conscious decision” in refusing to pay overtime as required by the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. The law, enacted in 1938, entitles employees to overtime pay amounting to at least one-and-a-half times that of regular wages.
Some Census supervisors “demanded that employees accomplish tasks in ‘whatever’ time it took,” requiring or permitting workers to put in more than 40 hours a week, the lawsuit states.
“It upset me. That’s why I am where I am today,” said Kent Christofferson, 46, of Marana, Ariz., a former field operations supervisor with the Census who was fired from his job in July 2000.
Christofferson, named as a plaintiff in the class-action suit, had complained to the Justice, Labor and Commerce departments, along with state and local representatives, in letters written one month before his termination.
“These people who went out and did counting door-to-door, … they had guns pointed on them, had dogs chasing them (and) had their cars break down on desert roads, just to get their jobs done,” said Christofferson, a 20-year Navy veteran who signed on with the Census to earn extra money while working toward a master’s degree in management.
Census administrators “were trying to save money, because the less they spent, the better they looked,” Christofferson said. “The money was available. They could have used it at any time, but they chose not to. ... When you have people pushing hours and everything, you don’t need to.”
More than 200,000 of the Census’ 550,000 employees may be eligible for overtime back payments, Christofferson believes.
Census directives came from the top, Lee said, with intense political pressure for an accurate and “cost-effective” count, as emphasized in a 1997 statement by former Commerce Secretary William M. Daley.
Still, Lee maintains Census workers joined the once-a-decade effort with the understanding that overtime would be compensated.
“They all got a booklet that said overtime had to be authorized,” Lee said. “What happened was, their supervisors told them either to bank their hours to the next week … [or] just to get the job done.”
Those who felt wronged by lack of overtime pay “know this is a short-term project, and if they complain they might not come back next week,” Lee said.
Lee also believes many of the claims are so small — in the hundreds or few thousands of dollars — that they are not likely to be pursued unless claimants know they’re not alone.
The federal government, in a response filed in December, claims it “authorized and compensated overtime hours for thousands of employees throughout the nation” when asked for in advance, and requested the lawsuit’s dismissal. Charles Miller, a spokesperson for the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., said only that the government “(questions) the merits of the suit on behalf of the class.”
Lee said he believed Census supervisors “were trying to cross their fingers and hope that no one would notice.”
“I think the next time the census comes up, they’ll be more careful about the overtime issue,” Lee said. “I mean, if private employers can (comply with the law), the government should hold themselves up as a paragon of what should be done.”
AsianWeek Staff Writer
Attorney Jack W. Lee has taken on supermarket chains, an insurance company and the city of San Francisco in class-action employment cases. Now he’s taking on the U.S. Department of Commerce in a lawsuit seeking hundreds of thousands of dollars in overtime back payments he claims have been wrongly withheld from employees of the Census 2000.
Though just 35 former Census 2000 employees have signed onto the class-action claim as of mid-January, Lee expects thousands of disgruntled census workers nationwide to follow suit once word of the litigation spreads. Last week, Lee’s San Francisco-based firm mailed 10,000 letters describing the lawsuit to former census workers throughout the country.
The result could propel court-ordered payouts into the “hundreds of millions” from the Commerce Department that oversees the Bureau of the Census, said Lee, 50, a native of Stockton, Calif. and a partner with Minami, Lew & Tamaki LLP.
Census administrators “were targeting a very vulnerable population here — people who are students, retired, homemakers — hoping those groups of people who didn’t need it as livelihood” wouldn’t raise a fuss, Lee said. “That was a recipe for disaster and it’s come home to roost now.”
The lawsuit, filed last August in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C., alleges the Census Bureau “made a conscious decision” in refusing to pay overtime as required by the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. The law, enacted in 1938, entitles employees to overtime pay amounting to at least one-and-a-half times that of regular wages.
Some Census supervisors “demanded that employees accomplish tasks in ‘whatever’ time it took,” requiring or permitting workers to put in more than 40 hours a week, the lawsuit states.
“It upset me. That’s why I am where I am today,” said Kent Christofferson, 46, of Marana, Ariz., a former field operations supervisor with the Census who was fired from his job in July 2000.
Christofferson, named as a plaintiff in the class-action suit, had complained to the Justice, Labor and Commerce departments, along with state and local representatives, in letters written one month before his termination.
“These people who went out and did counting door-to-door, … they had guns pointed on them, had dogs chasing them (and) had their cars break down on desert roads, just to get their jobs done,” said Christofferson, a 20-year Navy veteran who signed on with the Census to earn extra money while working toward a master’s degree in management.
Census administrators “were trying to save money, because the less they spent, the better they looked,” Christofferson said. “The money was available. They could have used it at any time, but they chose not to. ... When you have people pushing hours and everything, you don’t need to.”
More than 200,000 of the Census’ 550,000 employees may be eligible for overtime back payments, Christofferson believes.
Census directives came from the top, Lee said, with intense political pressure for an accurate and “cost-effective” count, as emphasized in a 1997 statement by former Commerce Secretary William M. Daley.
Still, Lee maintains Census workers joined the once-a-decade effort with the understanding that overtime would be compensated.
“They all got a booklet that said overtime had to be authorized,” Lee said. “What happened was, their supervisors told them either to bank their hours to the next week … [or] just to get the job done.”
Those who felt wronged by lack of overtime pay “know this is a short-term project, and if they complain they might not come back next week,” Lee said.
Lee also believes many of the claims are so small — in the hundreds or few thousands of dollars — that they are not likely to be pursued unless claimants know they’re not alone.
The federal government, in a response filed in December, claims it “authorized and compensated overtime hours for thousands of employees throughout the nation” when asked for in advance, and requested the lawsuit’s dismissal. Charles Miller, a spokesperson for the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., said only that the government “(questions) the merits of the suit on behalf of the class.”
Lee said he believed Census supervisors “were trying to cross their fingers and hope that no one would notice.”
“I think the next time the census comes up, they’ll be more careful about the overtime issue,” Lee said. “I mean, if private employers can (comply with the law), the government should hold themselves up as a paragon of what should be done.”