On January 25, 2018, the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico conditionally certified an FLSA collective action of salaried field personnel in Olivas v. C & S Oilfield Services, LLC, No. CIV 17-0022 JB/CG. In this salaried oilfield overtime lawsuit, the court also authorized notice to those workers by mail, email, and text message. The Siegel Law Group, with co-counsel, represented the workers.
On January 25, 2018, after a hearing that same day, United States District Judge James O. Browning signed an Order Granting Plaintiffs’ Motion for Notice to Potential Plaintiffs and Conditional Certification (Doc. 36). That Order granted the motion and conditionally certified the case as a collective action. On April 27, 2018, he filed the promised Memorandum Opinion explaining why, published at 349 F. Supp. 3d 1092.
In close paraphrase, the Order defined the workers who were to get notice as all field personnel employed by the defendants over the last three years who were paid on a salary basis. That included, but was not limited to, positions the defendants called:
C & S Oilfield argued the group was too broad. It said the sworn statements came only from hands, lead hands, a tank hand, and a water transfer technician, and it asked to limit the employee list to those titles. In the Memorandum Opinion, the Court rejected that argument: “The proposed class is not too broad.”
Notice terms. Under the Order:
The January 25 Order found “the need to allow Plaintiff to send notice via text message due to the fact that oil and gas industry workers travel frequently and are away for long periods of time.” It allowed a brief text message with a link to the notice and consent form, and it let workers sign electronically.
The ruling also did not split the crew by job title. According to the Memorandum Opinion, the named plaintiff and five other workers swore that their field work involved manual and technical labor, did not require advanced degrees, and did not involve supervisory duties. They also swore that they regularly worked more than eighty hours per week on a salary without overtime pay.
The Court said a field hand and a tank hand may not perform precisely the same tasks, “but that proposed class members held different job titles does not mean that they are not similarly situated.” In a footnote, Judge Browning wondered whether field hands are what are called roustabouts, and tank hands what are called pumpers. He wrote that if he pictured these workers correctly, there was not so much difference between them as to prevent calling them similarly situated.
The Court also noted that twenty-six workers had already consented to join. Conditional certification is an early step. It is not a finding that C & S Oilfield misclassified anyone or broke the law. Under the lenient standard the court applied at the time of this 2018 ruling, it found substantial allegations that the workers were similarly situated, so notice could go out.
The Fair Labor Standards Act requires employers to pay non-exempt workers time and a half for hours over forty in a workweek. According to the Memorandum Opinion, the plaintiff alleged that C & S Oilfield misclassified its salaried field personnel as exempt from overtime. As a general matter, a salary alone does not make a worker exempt; the FLSA’s white-collar exemptions also require job duties that meet specific tests. Learn more about salaried vs. hourly pay and overtime.
Each worker must opt in to an FLSA collective action by filing a written consent. The court applied, at the time of this 2018 ruling, the Tenth Circuit’s two-step approach as the Memorandum Opinion describes it. That meant a lenient conditional certification test at the notice stage, and a stricter review later, usually after discovery. Some federal appeals courts have since changed this approach — the Fifth Circuit in Swales v. KLLM Transport Services (2021) and the Sixth Circuit in Clark v. A&L Homecare & Training Center (2023).
According to the Memorandum Opinion, the complaint also brought a class action claim under the New Mexico Minimum Wage Act. The rulings described here addressed the FLSA notice motion.
This page describes a 2018 court order. The time to join that collective was set by the court in that case. If you have worked in a similar role, the Siegel Law Group can evaluate your own claims.
Have you worked in the oilfield as a field hand, lead hand, water transfer technician, crew leader, laborer, crewmember, tank hand, or team leader? Were you paid a salary, and did you often work more than forty hours a week without overtime? A lawyer can review how you were paid, even if your employer used different job titles.
Contact the Siegel Law Group for a free consultation.
Related rulings: Calvillo v. Bull Rogers, another oilfield overtime case in the District of New Mexico, Rodriguez v. Peak Pressure Control, another New Mexico oilfield overtime case, and Bell v. Madron Services, another District of New Mexico case for salaried field employees, also with text notice.
Some do. A salary, standing alone, does not exempt an oilfield worker from Fair Labor Standards Act overtime. Exemptions generally depend on both pay and actual duties. Crew members who do manual and technical labor at well sites, and who do not make hiring or operational decisions, are generally not who the white-collar exemptions cover.
They can. In Olivas v. C & S Oilfield Services, the employer argued that different job titles should be split apart. At the conditional certification stage, the court disagreed, because the workers described the same primary duties of manual and technical labor on oilfields.
Courts can approve it. In this case, the court authorized a short text message linking to the notice and consent form, because oil and gas industry workers travel often and are away for long periods. It also let workers sign consent forms electronically. Whether text notice is allowed is decided case by case.
It is an early, preliminary step in an FLSA collective action. It lets the court approve notice to other workers who may be similarly situated, so they can decide whether to opt in. It is not a ruling that the employer broke the law. Under the approach this court applied in 2018, the employer could later move to decertify the group, which the court would review under a stricter standard; standards now vary by court.
Under the FLSA, a salaried oilfield worker generally has two years after each short-paid pay period to sue, or three years where the employer’s violation was willful, under 29 U.S.C. § 255(a). The clock keeps running for each oilfield worker in a collective action until that worker’s signed consent to join is on the court’s docket, as 29 U.S.C. § 256(b) provides. See our page on overtime claim deadlines.
The Siegel Law Group is a national overtime and wage law firm devoted entirely to representing workers denied overtime pay. Where many firms include wage cases as a small part of a broader employment practice, the Siegel Law Group has built its entire practice around overtime litigation — and the results reflect that commitment: $100M+ recovered for workers, 50+ class and collective action certifications, and 100+ federal lawsuits filed in 27+ federal courts nationwide. Founding attorney Jack Siegel is a Bloomberg BNA contributing author on wage and hour law.
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