Oil and gas companies stiff 29,000 workers out of $40 million

[imagine2015]

Source: U. S. News and World Report



Oil and gas companies stiff 29,000 workers out of $40 million
by Alan Neuhauser
1:20 PM
April 4, 2016

Like beacons in the night, the flares burning over America's oil and gas fields drew tens of thousands of workers over the past decade, promising big paydays and new pickup trucks, even for those who had just graduated high school.

But in an industry sector recently plagued by plunging oil prices that have forced thousands of rigs to go idle, many of those workers have been feeling even more financial pain, having been forced to wait for their full paychecks.

More than 29,000 oil and gas employees have been stiffed over $40 million in back wages, according to findings from more than 1,100 investigations launched since 2012 by the Labor Department.

Despite booming industry profits and record oil and gas output – which together rejuvenated the country's economy and transformed the U.S. into the world's top oil and gas producer in 2014 and 2015 – companies misclassified their workers and failed to pay them required overtime, even as they put in long workdays in often dangerous conditions.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/oil-and-gas-companies-stiff-29000-workers-out-of-dollar40-million/ar-BBrkYTp?li=BBnbfcN


Read more: http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/oil-and-gas-companies-stiff-29000-workers-out-of-dollar40-million/ar-BBrkYTp?li=BBnbfcN

[turbinetree]

1. Lets not forget................................

this is the same agency the right wingers and the NRTW want to shutter, the republicans do not like this agency and the "Dark Money " interests hate this agency.

http://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/history/dolorigabridge.htm

http://www.organizedwealth.us/union-busting/nrtwc-founded.html


Honk-----------------for a political revolution Bernie 2016

[Dustlawyer]

2. We had a young man that served as my bosses errand boy until he met his wife who pushed him to get a

real job. he went to work with only a HS diploma and within three years was the "Tool Pusher" (head of his own rig crew) making $200,000 a year. I ran into him at a party at my bosses house last year to hear how great things were for them. He started talking about his new house, cars, boat, 4 wheelers etc. I strongly urged him to sell a bunch of it and start putting money back for retirement and oil busts. His wife stated that they would never lay her husband off because they love him so much. I tried to politely tell them they would when another bust came, I have seen several since I live in the middle of the Texas oil patch (birth place of what was eventually Mobile Oil and Texaco). Sadly, he was laid off and they have lost everything.

[Paladin]

5. I lived through several O&G busts, myself.

So glad I'm retired and out of that miserable work. When it's good, it's very, very good---but the good times never last, and energy companies dispose of thousands of peoples' careers without a second thought. I made some money at it, but if I had my life to live over, I'd damn sure pick something else to do......

[chapdrum]

7. Thank you Paladin,

for sharing your experience.

Monopolies aren't enough for the overgrown children that run them.

They've got to act like complete a**holes on top of it.

[PersonNumber503602]

10. It seems like something someone could do early in life to bank up a some money

I know a few people who worked in that industry, and they would be gone for months at a time. I can totally see how a single person without a kids could do it, but seems rough for anyone with a family. It also seems like really hard and dirty work from what I've heard. So maybe do it for a year or so, put most of the money in the bank or invest it, and then go on to more secure work (albeit for less pay probably)

[Paladin]

11. There are plenty of office jobs in the energy industry.

Downtown areas of Houston, Denver, Lafayette, and many other cities owe much of their occupancy to such work forces. Many people (myself included) do the rough field work early in their careers, with the goal of eventually ending up in a better-paying position, in an office. The problem with the oil & gas biz is the inordinate number of creep bosses you have to put up with---people who really should be in psycho wards, rather than fancy corner office suites. (I could make a snide remark here about an industry dominated by engineers, but I won't.) I stuck with it because the money was good, and I wanted my kids to have it better than I did. But other than a handful of lifelong friends, I didn't enjoy it at all.

[HuckleB]

3. .

[AzDar]

4. Shameful. This country needs someone to fight for Labor... Bernie. Now more than EVER.

[chapdrum]

6. Would the richest industry in the history of money

actually stoop this low?

And the largest corporation of them all, sat on proof that burning fossil fuels would bring about (ta da) climate change.

[vkkv]

8. Unbelievable!!! -- no, not really.. eom

[Scuba]

9. They own so many politicians they can count on never being held accountable.