Lawsuit Alleges CSC Not Paying Overtime To Systems Administrators

A class-action lawsuit filed against Computer Sciences Corp. accuses the Falls Church, Va.-based solution provider of not paying overtime to its system administrators.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Connecticut Tuesday, said CSC violated the Fair Labor Standards Act by classifying its systems administrators as salaried employees instead of hourly, which denied them overtime pay, according to court documents.

CSC declined comment on the lawsuit.

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The company ranked No. 4 on CRN's 2014 Solution Provider 500 list and had revenue of roughly $13 billion for the year ended March 28.

Former CSC employees Joseph Strauch and Timothy Colby were named as plaintiffs in the class action.

"We system administrators have worked long hours for CSC and its clients, contributing to CSC's revenues and success," Strauch said in a statement. "I hope that this lawsuit will enable my fellow system administrators to get paid in accordance with the law."

System administrators handle installation, maintenance and support of computer software or hardware -- duties that were misclassified by the company, according to the court filing.

"There are going to be CSC workers called in on July 4 to their office or computer to fix a crash or some emergency, and CSC can make them do that night after night. The purpose of this law is to incentivize CSC to pay them for that time or give them time off as compensation, to limit the burden on the employees doing the work," said Jahan Sagafi, a partner at Outten & Golden, one of the law firms representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

CSC settled a similar case in 2005, when it paid $24 million in a labor lawsuit involving more than 10,000 technical support workers.

Sagafi said it could be three to five years before a resolution is reached.

PUBLISHED JULY 2, 2014