Cool, everybody!

Thank you to everyone who has responded, however you’ve chosen to respond.  I’ve talked to a number of people about this both off line and on, and I’m still looking into the situation.  Probably not a lot will happen on a Sunday, so if you read this and haven’t responded yet, please do.

A few have chimed in to say that the Sutherland abuses are nothing new.  That’s certainly true, even the original organization attempt was a while ago, but the letters are only coming out now, right before the deadline.

What’s fishie is that the letter states that the Department of Labor has done and audit and determined that some of us are owed back pay, but that the corrective transaction will happen between the employee and Sutherland’s own H.R. department.  That, and the fact that it says I’ve got X dollars of money coming back to me, “less applicable withholdings and liquidated damages” of . . . .  X dollars exactly.

So maybe the first seeming discrepancy is normal and the second is a product of my own non-lawyer-ish interpretation of legalese.  Maybe, but it strikes me as odd that the DOL performs an audit and the corrections should happen directly through the employer.  It seems like the kind of thing that the DOL would handle directly, but who knows in Bush’s White House. . .

Besides which, I’ve not previously been informed of any lawsuit that I’m aware of.  This letter seems to spend two paragraphs telling you “you may already have won x dollars!” and then the last para is spent saying in as few words as possible that you waive any right to sue Sutherland by taking this money.

So, if you know anything, hip me to it, please!  Throw a comment in the comments section or use the “Contact Me” link in the masthead.