Contractor, Or Employee?

Workers have filed a class-action lawsuit against Hewlett-Packard Company, claiming they were wrongly classified as contractors instead of employees.

The lawsuit, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Boise, claims that the misclassification denied benefits such as health insurance, vacation and sick leave, and retirement plans to more than 3,000 workers throughout the United States.

"H-P believes this case has no merit. We have no further comment," Hewlett-Packard spokeswoman Brigida Bergkamp said.

Nampa resident Jennifer Miller worked as an employee at Hewlett-Packards' Boise plant from 1989 to 1995, when she accepted a voluntary severance package as the company moved some jobs overseas. But a short time later, she ran into a former Hewlett-Packard manager who had taken a job with a company that contracts to provide employees to Hewlett-Packard.

The manager offered her a three-week contracting job back at Hewlett-Packard, Miller said.

"That three-week job turned into an 18-month position. And then, every time an assignment ended, I was qualified for something else at H-P and so I did that. So I've been at H-P, on their premises, for almost every day of the past 10 years," Miller said.

Though technically she was employed by the companies Veritest and Manpower Professional during that period, she said, Hewlett-Packard had the power to set her hours, train her and change her title from "software integration support engineer" - as set by Manpower Professional - to Hewlett-Packard's preferred "software/firmware engineer."

Still, Miller said, she did not get the vacation time or health insurance package given to traditional Hewlett-Packard employees. And like several other contract employees, Miller said, she was laid off earlier this month.

Because the majority of Manpower Professional's temporary employee contracts are with Hewlett-Packard, Miller does not expect to get more work anytime soon.

"It's not like we're talking a low-skills or no-skills position," Miller said. "I still have the qualifications to do the job same as any H-P employee. And they recognize that, or else they wouldn't have kept me on all that time."

Miller and the other 32 named complainants claim that under a questionnaire used to determine employee status by the courts and the Internal Revenue Service, they qualify as employees instead of as contractors.

The complainants claim that damages are more than $300 million.
By Rebecca Boone