Comcast, customer service contractor targeted in civil suitComcast, customer service contractor targeted in civil suit

The suit, filed by Washington, DC, Attorney General Karl Racine, alleges that Arise Virtual Solutions and Comcast failed to pay service agents legally due wages.

Jeff Baumgartner, Senior Editor

January 31, 2022

4 Min Read
Comcast, customer service contractor targeted in civil suit

Comcast and Arise Virtual Solutions, one of the cable operator's contractors, are facing a civil lawsuit over allegations that they failed to pay legally due wages to certain customer service representatives.

The suit (PDF) was filed on January 19 in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia Civil Division, and was led by Washington, DC, Attorney General Karl Racine.

It alleges that Arise and Comcast denied customer service agents minimum wage, overtime and paid sick leave by misclassifying them as independent contractors rather than employees. The suit further alleges that Arise targets women of color in their marketing for service agents and then denies those workers the pay and benefits required by District law.

Figure 1: The civil suit seeks damages for wages owed to agents as a result of Arise and Comcast's alleged minimum wage, overtime and paid sick leave violations. (Source: DecaStock/Alamy Stock Photo) The civil suit seeks damages for wages owed to agents as a result of Arise and Comcast's alleged minimum wage, overtime and paid sick leave violations.
(Source: DecaStock/Alamy Stock Photo)

Arise's approach has allegedly injured at least 180 workers in the District, according to the complaint, which characterizes Arise as a "gig economy" company. Arise's clientele also includes corporate giants such as Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Disney, Home Depot and Walgreens.

Comcast and Arise have been asked for comment.

'Systematic' misclassification cuts labor costs, suit claims

Arise's decision to "systematically misclassify" employees as independent contractors enables Arise to reduce labor costs below the amount its workers are entitled to under District law, the suit alleges. Those entitlements include a minimum wage that is currently set at $15.20 per hour and overtime pay of at least 1.5 times their regular rate. The complaint claims that certain Arise agents who provided customer support for Comcast earned a rate of $6 for each 30-minute shift worked, or $12 per hour.

The suit also alleges that Arise employees are required to pay additional fees to pass criminal history and background checks, to pass an introductory training course priced at $99 and other compensable work time that further depresses an agent's actual hourly wages. Tough working conditions were also cited, including allegations that Arise "maintains significant power and control over its agents" using performance metrics that are "lopsidedly in favor of Arise."

The suit holds that Comcast is liable because it jointly employs Arise agents who provide customer support services to the cable operator, and exercises "substantial control over their conditions of work from hiring, to performance, and through termination." Comcast, the suit claims, also requires Arise agents to complete mandatory certification courses and pass mandatory assessment tests created and maintained by Comcast.

Comcast exerts "significant control over Arise agents' conditions of work," the suit alleges, requiring them to possess dual monitors, a headset and a certain amount of hard drive space on their computers, and requiring that they meet hourly minimum requirements for weekend shifts.

"Thus, for Arise agents who provided customer support services to Comcast, Comcast was a joint employer equally liable for Arise's violations of the District's wage-and-hour laws," the suit alleges.

Seeking damages and injunction

The suit seeks damages for wages owed to agents as a result of the companies' alleged minimum wage, overtime and paid sick leave violations. It also seeks an injunction against Arise and Comcast that would put a halt to the alleged "misclassification scheme."

For violations of the District's Minimum Wage Revision Act, the law provides for penalties of $50 for first violations or $100 for subsequent violations for the minimum wage and overtime violation elements, according to the suit, as well as damages of $500 for each accrued paid sick leave day denied.

The District's office noted that it has launched more than 50 investigations into wage theft and payroll fraud since gaining independent authority to do so in 2017.

In January 2020, the office secured its largest wage theft settlement to date, requiring Power Design to pay $2.75 million to hundreds of workers over alleged wage theft and worker misclassification claims. It has also sued Instacart for including service fees that were made to look like tips that instead flowed to Instacart's profit base, and recovered about $1.5 million in restitution that was returned to DoorDash drivers to replace tips that the company had kept for itself.

— Jeff Baumgartner, Senior Editor, Light Reading

About the Author

Jeff Baumgartner

Senior Editor, Light Reading

Jeff Baumgartner is a Senior Editor for Light Reading and is responsible for the day-to-day news coverage and analysis of the cable and video sectors. Follow him on X and LinkedIn.

Baumgartner also served as Site Editor for Light Reading Cable from 2007-2013. In between his two stints at Light Reading, he led tech coverage for Multichannel News and was a regular contributor to Broadcasting + Cable. Baumgartner was named to the 2018 class of the Cable TV Pioneers.

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