Store employees benefit

Goldman Sachs IT employees who worked up to 70-hour weeks without overtime pay have won a settlement against their employer for the sum of $993,841, according to Bloomberg.  More than a hundred contracted computer technicians worked for the banking giant without overtime pay, according to a complaint filed May 2010.  Today, a US District Court judge approved the terms of the settlement, ending a two-year legal dispute.  $262,787 of that will go to the workers’ lawyers.

Workers in Information Technology typically experience a lack of overtime due to it being relatively new field of expertise.  IT work has become increasingly specialized over the last 30 years, and yet employers often do not recognize the vital importance of the job.  Though labor laws vary between states, it is generally illegal for a contracted employee to endure more than 40 hours of labor per week without overtime pay.  However, overtime infractions often go unreported — the threat of total unemployment is more terrifying to workers than the loss of a few hours of overtime pay.  In this case, the extent to which the IT professionals worked overtime was certainly egregious.  Hopefully this settlement will encourage other maligned employees to come forward and claim their rightful pay.