Firefighter Overtime Discussing Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) for Firefighters, First Responders as well as Human Resource & Finance Professional

Stan Smith, a former Fire Marshal for the City of Sand Springs, Oklahoma Fire Department has agreed to a $247,500 settlement with the city following his 2017 lawsuit over unpaid overtime. Smith filed a rather common straight-forward FLSA lawsuit in September 2017. Smith alleged that he regularly performed work during his unpaid scheduled lunch hour. The FLSA requires employers pay ...

Gary Perry, a paramedic for Montgomery County Emergency Medical Services, has filed a federal lawsuit alleging the county fails to pay him and other similarly situated medics overtime as required by the FLSA. According to Perry’s complaint—which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee on October 28—the county does not provide Perry and other ...

Does your state participate in Daylight Savings Time? Most likely, you answered yes to this question. Now, in addition to changing the batteries on smoke and CO detectors, did you pay your firefighters correctly? Since it is getting to be that time of year again, here is a post from FirefighterOvertime.org dating back to December of 2017 that is just ...

Today’s FLSA Question: I am a full-time paid firefighter that works a 24/48 schedule for an average of 56 hours per week. Historically, firefighters in our city received all of their FLSA overtime in one big check at the end of the year. The city maintained a running record of all the overtime pay firefighters were owed from scheduled work ...

A New York jury has found the City of New York violated the FLSA by not paying EMTs for the time spent working before and after assigned shifts. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, on February 13, 2013 by more than 2,500 FDNY EMTs and paramedics. According to attorneys representing ...

A lawyer representing a group of Blytheville, Arkansas firefighters is gearing up to sue the City of Blytheville for unpaid wages. According to NewsChannel 3, the lawyer sent a “demand letter” to city officials indicating the intent to file an FLSA lawsuit over a city policy that requires city firefighters be on-call 24-hours per day, seven days per week in ...

Today’s FLSA Question: I am a public safety dispatcher for a small town. We are scheduled to work five 8-hour shifts per week. Only one dispatcher is on-shift at a time. We are required to be in the dispatch center and ready to work by the start of our assigned shift. We are also required to log into the computer ...

The City of Santa Clara, California has settled an FLSA lawsuit by agreeing to pay more than 650 current and former city employees a total of $2.7 million. While the terms of the settlement require the city to make payments to over 650 potential plaintiffs, the vast majority of which are non-firefighters, we will focus on how the settlement applies ...

Three recently retired Gloversville, New York firefighters have filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York claiming the City of Gloversville violated the FLSA. Recent Gloversville Fire Department retirees, James Anderson, Robert Davis, and David Rackmyre allege the city failed to properly administer its FLSA compensatory (comp) time program which resulted in the ...

The crux of the plaintiff’s complaint involved alleged FLSA regular rate violations. In particular, the city’s failure to include certain wage augments in the plaintiffs’ regular rate. The FLSA requires virtually all the money an employee is paid included in his or her regular rate. Proper calculation of the regular rate is critical since all FLSA overtime must be paid at a rate of at least time-and-one-half of the employee’s regular rate. Very often employers utilize an employee’s base hourly rate to calculate the overtime rate of pay. However, the FLSA requires that all remuneration be included in the regular rate of pay.

Specifically, the plaintiffs made two basic claims:

• First, the city failed to include money paid directly to employees in lieu of receiving employer sponsored medical benefits in the regular rate.
• Second, the plaintiffs also wanted holiday pay included in their regular rate.