SpaceX sued, accused of failing to pay employee wages

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 22 (UPI) -- SpaceX is being sued by a former employee who alleges the company failed to pay overtime wages, forced employees to trim hours on time cards and did not provide legally required breaks to employees.

Stan Saporito, identified as a former SpaceX structures technician, alleges that between June 2013 and February 2015, SpaceX regularly asked him to work overtime without proper compensation.

In the lawsuit filed Monday in Los Angeles, Saporito alleges the company also asked him and other hourly employees to skip breaks and decrease the amount of time they worked when filling out time cards. The lawsuit seeks for SpaceX to pay back the wages Saporito says he is owed and additional damages for himself and other hourly employees.

"SpaceX required [Saporito] and [other hourly employees] to work off the clock without paying them for all the time they were under SpaceX's control performing post-shift duties, specifically by failing to provide enough labor hours to accomplish all the job tasks that SpaceX expected [them] to complete," Saporito's attorney wrote in the lawsuit. "[They] were required to clock out of SpaceX's timekeeping system in order to perform additional work for SpaceX as required to meet SpaceX's job requirements."

SpaceX spokesperson John Taylor told Vice Motherboard that "SpaceX denies the claims made in this complaint and will refute them in court."

SpaceX is facing at least three other pending lawsuits alleging the company either laid off employees without proper notice or forced employees to work without proper compensation.

The lawsuit demands a jury trial for the class action complaints of unfair competition, failure to pay overtime wages, failure to provide accurate itemized statements and failure to provide wages when due -- all in violation of California's Labor Code.

"SpaceX knowingly caused a violation of the California Labor Code by directing its employees to alter the time records, or 'shave' the time worked by [hourly employees] in order to avoid paying these employees for all their time worked, including overtime worked and missed meal breaks," the suit says. "[Employees] were also from time to time unable to take 30 minute off-duty meal breaks and were not fully relieved of duty for their meal periods."