Employees of Consolidated Nuclear Security could see their years-long attempt to organize a class-action suit over lost wages dismissed on a technicality by Tuesday.
The employees of the manager of the Y-12 site in Oak Ridge Tenn., have until midnight Tuesday to identify their new lawyers after the attorneys who organized the suit dropped the case over an unspecified conflict.
Those lawyers in March bowed out of the suit, filed in 2020, which claims that the plaintiffs and other salaried employees at Y-12 failed to receive owed wages as a result of the company moving from monthly to a bi-weekly payroll in 2015.
On or before May 9 the three named plaintiffs must file a status report informing the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee in Knoxville whether they have representation and that the court has jurisdiction over the case, according to an April 24 filing.
“A failure to fully and timely comply with this Order will result in dismissal of Plaintiffs claims against Defendant,” according to court documents.
The plaintiffs James Myers, James Young and Douglas Messerli allege that CNS illegally withheld a total of $10 million from thousands of employees. CNS said in court filings that it paid its employees in Tennessee on time.
Justin Gilbert, one of the plaintiff’s former lawyers, said a conflict arose, but would not disclose what it was. The three named plaintiffs were, at the time, interviewing potential new counsel, according to Gilbert and court documents.
Several employees filed a class action lawsuit against CNS in 2020 alleging that in 2017, CNS told its salaried employees at Y-12 they had been paid in advance and that the company “intended to ‘realign’ their pay with another plant.” The suit alleges that CNS then paid its salaried employees for only 25 of 26 biweekly periods.
“In truth, the Y-12 salaried employees were not paid in advance,” the suit alleges. “Thus, CNS unlawfully took one biweekly check from all salaried … employees in June 2017,” amounting to a four percent loss in annual income, according to the initial complaint filed in 2020.
The three employees who are named plaintiffs in the suit against CNS claim to represent a class that includes all current and former Y-12 employees at the time of the alleged “pay date realignment. The class action has not yet been certified.
