Comcast and an independent contractor the cable giant relied on to perform repairs and installations in northern California and Washington have agreed to settle a class action lawsuit on behalf of 4,500 technicians who claimed they were forced to lie about meal breaks they could not actually take and were underpaid $8.7 million dollars.

O.C. Communications of Elk Grove, Calif. and Comcast have jointly agreed to settle the lawsuit with a settlement payment of $7.5 million to provide restitution to thousands of contract technicians who were ordered to lie about their work hours and mandatory break times.

The plaintiffs claimed the contracting firm repeatedly ordered workers to claim meal breaks they were rarely allowed to actually take — forced to continue working at job sites to fulfill an unreasonable work schedule. The plaintiffs also submitted evidence that workers’ time cards were forged or manipulated to undercount work hours and paperwork showing reasonable work-related expenses went unreimbursed.

The plaintiffs claimed they were well on their way to proving O.C. Communications, hired by Comcast, flagrantly violated the U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act and state laws governing wages and labor conditions in California and Washington.

“The gross settlement amount of $7,500,000 […] represents more than 86% of the approximate $8.7 million that we calculated in unpaid wages that would have been owed to all class members if each class member had been able to prove that he or she worked 2.5 hours off the clock in every workweek during the relevant time period,” the plaintiffs said.

The lawsuit was dispensed with through an elaborate mediation process involving both O.C. Communications and Comcast.