Employee Misclassification Case Against Whiting Petroleum Corp. Bumped to Texas Federal Court

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A proposed collective action filed in Colorado against Whiting Petroleum Corp in April 2017 has been transferred to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. The plaintiff, who worked as a rig welder for the defendant from May 2015 through April 2016, claims he was misclassified as an independent contractor instead of an employee covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act. The man alleges that instead of receiving time-and-a-half overtime pay, he was paid at only his straight time rate for working 12-hour shifts sometimes as many as seven days per week. 

“[The plaintiff] was not employed by Whiting on a project-by-project basis,” the case says of the plaintiff’s independent contractor classification. “In fact, while [the plaintiff] was classified as an independent contractor, he was regularly on call for Whiting and/or its clients and was expected to drop everything and work whenever needed.”