NextEra Energy Agrees to $9.5 Million Settlement in Nuclear Industry Wage-Fixing Case

The agreement comes less than a year after workers brought the case as a proposed class action in Maryland federal court. Plaintiffs said they plan to seek preliminary approval of the settlement “in the near future,” according to Bloomberg.

The lawsuit was originally filed by two power generation employees, who accused 26 nuclear plant operators and two consulting firms of unlawfully sharing wage data in an effort to keep compensation artificially low across the industry. Former employees alleged the companies exchanged information about worker pay and discussed strategies to suppress wages during meetings and through email communications, per Bloomberg.

Related: NextEra Energy Faces Antitrust Lawsuit Over Alleged Efforts to Block Competitor’s Project

Other companies named as defendants include Constellation Energy, Duke Energy, and Pacific Gas & Electric. NextEra, based in Florida, along with its subsidiary Florida Power & Light, also named in the lawsuit, agreed not only to contribute to a settlement fund but also to provide what court filings described as “material cooperation” to affected workers, according to Bloomberg.

Attorneys representing the plaintiffs told the court that additional details of the settlement would be disclosed at a later stage, pending judicial approval. NextEra did not immediately respond to requests for comment, while lead counsel for the plaintiffs declined to comment, per Bloomberg.

The defendants have denied wrongdoing throughout the case. In court filings, the power operators argued the allegations are “rendered all the more implausible by the fact that it supposedly occurred in one of the most heavily regulated industries in the world.”

Source: Bloomberg