OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR)— A furloughed Canoo employee, speaking exclusively to News 4, claims the company has not paid employees thousands of dollars it owes them for expensed purchases and did not pay salaried employees their full, final paychecks.
The employee hopes someone in the legal profession can help affected workers get what they believe Canoo still owes them.
For a now-furloughed Oklahoma City-based Canoo middle manager, who asked News 4 to keep his identity anonymous, New Year’s Day 2024 came with a new opportunity, full of promise.
“It was kind of extremely tempting for me to come on board when [Canoo] approached me,” the furloughed employee told New 4. “I was excited to go work for a company doing something cutting edge, new.”
The opportunity with Canoo came with compensation—worth all the long days the employee found himself working.
“The benefits were awesome,” the furloughed employee said.
It brought optimism.
“I was strongly under the belief that we were moments away from pumping vehicles out of the doors,” he said.
But 12 months later, the furloughed employee is beginning his 2025—heartbroken.
“It's disheartening,” he said. “And demoralizing is the best way that I could describe it.”
‘Heartbroken,’ the hard work he and his team put into Canoo doesn’t appear to have mattered.
“If you were in there during the day and saw the maintenance team, you know, moving whole steel structures and, you know, installing the robots and training them, you would have never believed that we'd be where we are,” he said.
“There” was the Oklahoma City warehouse Canoo rented out to serve as its main vehicle factory.
It was inside that warehouse where the employee learned on December 18, 2024, he and everyone else would be furloughed indefinitely.
“They called everybody down in waves and had everybody sit in the conference room,” the furloughed employee said. “Leadership didn't even have the audacity to drive three hours from Texas to meet us in person… They basically just told us that you're being furloughed effective immediately.”
Canoo’s chief administrative officer followed up with furloughed employees in an email two days later.
News 4 obtained a copy of the email.
It said the furlough would be effective December 23, that affected employees would remain employed with Canoo, and their benefits would stay active through the end of 2024.
It also noted, for “security reasons,” furloughed employees would all lose access to their employee accounts by close of business that day.
That posed a problem for the furloughed employee News 4 spoke with.
“You know how when you leave a company or when you let go from a company, you still have access to your benefits and your time sheets and your paystubs? We have zero access to any of that,” the furloughed employee said. “No one can get any access to any of their old paystubs or any of their information in or their banking or to change an address for their W-2s.”
Canoo’s chief administrative officer ended his email to furloughed employees telling them that if they had any problems or questions, they could email HR and get help.
But the furloughed employee News 4 spoke with said that didn’t bear out to be true.
“There's nobody on the other line answering us on our HR emails,” he said. “I have dozens upon dozens of employees who have worked for the company that know me, that have reached out to me and asked me, ‘hey, do you have anybody's phone number? Hey, how can I get ahold of somebody I can't get? I need paystubs. I need information for unemployment, I need X, Y, Z,’ and nobody can get it.”
More problems came when final paychecks went out.
“None of us got our full pay,” the furloughed employee said.
The furloughed employee says he was a salaried, full-time employee—not hourly.
“We're paid twice a month, the 15th and the last day of the month,” he said.
He told News 4 Canoo paid him a full paycheck on December 15.
He'd worked three days into the next pay cycle when he got furloughed on December 18.
“I know for salary employees, we worked a portion of our next pay cycle,” he said. “So by law, we're required to be paid our full salary.”
The law he’s referencing is the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
The FLSA says, essentially, that it doesn’t matter if a salaried employee worked every day in a week or pay cycle or not; if an employee worked even a second into the next week or pay cycle, their employer must pay them for that entire week or pay cycle.
But the furloughed employee says, Canoo didn’t do that.
"They just kind of prorated,” he said. "So instead of, say, a $4,000 check, people got a $500 check or a $600 check. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, that's illegal."
That’s not all he says Canoo still owes him.
“I'm personally owed some money for expense reports,” he said. “I was paying for things to keep things afloat”
He says he’s not alone in that department.
“I know that there was a maintenance manager that had a building permit that was pulled on the building that he had paid on that he wasn't paid for,” the furloughed employee said. “I know that there's a couple of directors that have left the company that have thousands owed to them on expense reports that haven't been paid out to them.”
A former Canoo employee, who left the company several months ago, told News 4 his job required him to drive back and forth across the state.
“I was having to drive to Pryor twice a week every week in my personal vehicle, and I was supposed to be reimbursed for that,” the former employee said.
The former employee said Canoo even had a written company policy requiring Canoo to reimburse him for mileage.
But several months after leaving Canoo, he says he’s still waiting.
“They have not paid me that,” the former employee said. “And it's close to $5,000.”
With their emails to HR going unanswered, the employees aren’t sure where to turn.
“At least pay us what you owe us, you know,” the furloughed employee said. “I'm just hoping that there's, you know, there's maybe an attorney or a lawyer out there, and in Oklahoma, that wants to defend a group of people that deserve to get paid their rightful salaries.”
For now, the furloughed employee is beginning his 2025—reflecting on what ‘was.’
"There were those times where it's, you’re gassed,” he said. “You're on your 60th hour of the week, you know, everybody's kind of, you know, tired and wiped out."
He’s reflecting on what could have been.
"And you got that last rah! rah! moment where you're congratulating them and pointing out all the accomplishments and telling them that their thumbprint is going to be on, you know, every vehicle that comes out the door,” he said.
And, unfortunately, he’s also reflecting on the reality of what ‘is.’
“And lo and behold, you're not sending any out,” he said. “I'm just praying for all the people that were furloughed and that they, you know, find something, something else. A closed door always leads to another new open door. So I'm just praying for my colleagues.”
News 4 has been unable to reach Canoo since the company announced it would be idling its Oklahoma facilities and furloughing its workforce last month.
At that time, Canoo issued the following statement:
“We regret having to furlough our employees, especially during the holidays, but we have no choice at this point. We are hopeful that we will be able to bring them back to work soon.”
This week, News 4 also learned Canoo is now auctioning off some of its equipment from its Torrance, California, facility.
Right now, it does not appear any equipment from its Oklahoma facilities is being sold.
On the topic of Canoo’s Oklahoma facilities, the furloughed employee told News 4 there are some interesting financial connections between the company Canoo was leasing its Oklahoma City factory from, and high-level Canoo employees, including Canoo’s CEO.
News 4 will share more of those details in an upcoming report.
