Orange County Register’s parent settles dispute with newspaper carriers

November 25, 2008

The company that operates the Orange County Register said Monday that it reached a multimillion-dollar settlement with the newspaper’s carriers after a long dispute over their employment status.

Freedom Communications Inc. in Irvine said it would pay no more than $22 million to settle a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of more than 5,000 newspaper carriers, who are considered independent contractors by the company.

The lawsuit, filed in 2003, alleged that the classification was unfair because it denied them overtime pay and mileage and required them to pay fines out of pocket for late papers and other delivery problems. The settlement, which came in the middle of the trial, does not require the firm to reclassify its carriers as employees.

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