Tag Archives: underpaid overtime

Today’s FLSA Question: I am a full-time paid firefighter working for a small fire department with 13 full-time firefighters. We work 24 hours on duty, followed by a 48 hours off-duty for an average of 56 hours per week. My department has a strange way of paying overtime. Instead of paying firefighters for overtime worked in a regular bi-weekly paycheck; ...

The City of Davis, California recently settled an FLSA lawsuit filed by a small group of city firefighters for a total of $1,268,912. The lawsuit, which was filed on July 26, 2016, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, was centered around whether payments made directly to firefighters in lieu of receiving employer sponsored medical benefits ...

Fire Captain David Simister and Cobb County, Georgia have agreed to a $30,000 settlement to end a lawsuit Simister filed in August 2020. Simister’s lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia on August 13, 2020, contained allegations the county failed to pay overtime as required by the FLSA and that the county ...

Cathedral City, California, has settled a lawsuit filed by 47 current and former firefighters that alleged the city failed to pay them overtime as required by the FLSA. The lawsuit, which was filed on March 19, 2019, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, contained allegations the city failed to include all remuneration in the firefighters’ ...

The City of Tipton, Indiana, its mayor and fire chief are facing an FLSA lawsuit filed by a veteran city firefighter. The suit, filed by twenty (plus) year department veteran Chad Frazier, follows a recent Department of Labor (DOL) Wage and Hour Investigation which ultimately found fifteen city firefighters were shorted almost $100,000 in overtime wages. In the suit, Frazier ...

The City of Chickasha, Oklahoma is facing a lawsuit filed by city firefighters for unpaid overtime. A group of thirty-one, current and former Chickasha firefighters filed the lawsuit in federal court earlier this month. Specifically, the firefighters allege the city failed to include contractually guaranteed longevity payments in their regular rate of pay in violation of the FLSA. As a ...

A small group of current and former EMS Captains for the City of Virginia Beach’s Emergency Medical Services Department have filed a federal lawsuit alleging the city’s pay practices violate both the FLSA and Virginia state law. According to the medics’ complaint, which was filed earlier this week in federal court, the city improperly classifies EMS Captains as overtime exempt ...

The San Diego City Council unanimously approved a $3.4 million settlement with more than 700 city firefighters this week. The settlement resolves a 2019 lawsuit, that was initially filed by only three city firefighters, alleging the city’s pay practices violated the FLSA. Over the course of the next several months hundreds of more firefighters opted into the suit. In the ...

A group of more than 1,000 Washington D.C., police officers filed a lawsuit earlier this week in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia alleging the District has shorted the officers’ overtime rate during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, the officers claim the District has failed to include hazardous duty pay in their regular rate of pay in violation ...

The Cobb County Georgia Fire Department is facing a second lawsuit in as many years for allegedly violating the FLSA. David Simister, a fire captain for Cobb County Fire filed this second suit, on behalf of himself and “other similarly situated individuals,” last week in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. Simister claims the county’s pay ...