Damned if you do, damned if you don’t files: United Airlines customer service
April 14 2009, 9:56pm
There is a horrifying tale on Consumerist about a family that missed a flight to visit their dying mother in the hospital because a ticket agent refused to help them because it was time for her break. What the story doesn’t tell you, and what none of the commenters seem to realize, is that it’s the trial lawyers that put United Airlines in that situation. Oregon labor laws California labor laws require workers to be permitted to take breaks; plaintiffs’ attorneys have made a multi-million-dollar cottage industry out of class action lawsuits against employers where customer service was permitted to take priority and workers occasionally didn’t take their breaks. (In California, the penalty for failing to provide a ten-minute break is an hour of pay.) To avoid this, the employer has to enforce the break period stringently, because they can potentially be held liable even if the employee voluntarily avoids the break.
Tags: airlines, sued if you do, wage and hour suits
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