The lawsuit claims that because of the attack and resulting outage, Honda was unable to accurately track hours for its employees. — DARWIN LAGANZON/Pixabay
An Alabama Honda worker has filed suit against the automaker, claiming he wasn’t paid overtime following a ransomware attack on the company’s timekeeping system.
The suit, filed Monday in US District Court, seeks back pay with interest, damages, fees, and court costs, along with a class action status for other affected employees.
According to the 14-page lawsuit, Brandon Whaley, a Honda worker living in Calhoun County, has been with the company since 2019.
In mid-December, Ultimate Kronos Group, which operates a workforce management software, was hit with a cyberattack that affected millions of employees using the system’s timekeeping system for pay, including Honda.
According to NPR, other workers included 20,000 public transit workers in the New York City metro area, employees of FedEx and Whole Foods, and medical workers across the country.
The lawsuit claims that because of the attack and resulting outage, Honda was unable to accurately track hours for its employees.
“As a result of Honda’s failure to accurately track their actual hours worked each week, employees who were non-exempt and worked overtime were in many cases paid less than the hours they worked in the work week, including overtime hours,” the suit claims, saying Whaley usually averages about 55 hours a week on the job.
Instead, the suit claims, Honda paid employees based on estimates of time or pay, or “based upon arbitrary considerations.”
“Honda pushed the effects of the Kronos outage onto the backs of its most economically vulnerable workers, making sure that it kept the money it owed to those employees in its own pockets, rather than take steps to make sure its employees were paid on time and in full for the work they did,” the suit says.
Chris Abbruzzese, corporate spokesman for Honda, would not comment on the lawsuit, but said the company has communicated with employees from the beginning to resolve the issue and minimise its impact.
“Honda is committed to paying associates timely and accurately,” Abbruzzese said. “Our timekeeping vendor, Kronos, experienced an outage last December that prevented us from using our normal payment processes, and we have taken measures to minimise any impact to our associates. While we have worked to compensate associates for amounts owed as a result of the Kronos outage, due to the complexity of the timekeeping measures that were required to be used during the outage, we continue to work to reconcile and resolve outstanding concerns.”
The automaker isn’t the only company being hit with a lawsuit as a result of the ransomware outage. Employees at Tesla, PepsiCo and New York Metropolitan Transit Authority have filed similar lawsuits. – al.com/Tribune News Service
