Tag Archives: Department of Labor

Today’s FLSA Question: I am a volunteer fire chief for a fully volunteer fire department. Like many volunteer fire departments, we struggle getting trucks on the road during weekday hours. However, we have several volunteer firefighters that are employed by the town in other departments in addition to serving as volunteer firefighters. Recently, a town official proposed allowing these town ...

A group of four former Destin, Florida firefighters filed an FLSA lawsuit earlier this week alleging that their former employer, The Destin Fire Control District [District] failed to pay them for hours spent attending work-related training. Former Destin firefighters David Garner, Brian Ostos, Alejandro Osorio, and Joseph Quinn filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District ...

An FLSA overtime lawsuit filed last fall by a retired deputy fire chief will continue following a recent federal court ruling. Retired First Deputy Fire Chief Gary Mogel filed the lawsuit in September 2020, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Mogel alleges in his lawsuit that his employer, the City of Reading Pennsylvania, failed to ...

Today’s FLSA Question: I am the fire chief of a full-time paid municipal fire department. Several of our firefighters and officers have been voluntarily attending on-campus classes in several different programs offered through the National Fire Academy (NFA). As a policy, the department provides these members with paid time off (without using vacation time or requiring shift trades) for all ...

Firefighters from Georgetown County, South Carolina are again attempting to raise public awareness regarding the ongoing critical firefighter and paramedic staffing shortage within the county. The Georgetown Professional Firefighters Association, Local 4526, has posted a three-page letter on its Facebook page that provides examples of how the “critical staffing shortage” is impacting the firefighters ability to serve the community. According ...

Officials from Escambia County, Florida, and the county’s firefighter’s union have agreed to a new three-year collective bargaining agreement that includes a department-wide wage adjustment for all county firefighters. The new contract requires firefighters receive pay raises ranging from two to twenty percent. According to the president of the Escambia Professional Firefighters Association, Lt. Nick Gradia, Escambia’s pay scales had ...

The City of New York is once again facing an FLSA lawsuit filed by FDNY Emergency Medical Services (EMS) workers. In a 15-page complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on September 16, 2021, three named plaintiffs claim the City of New York is systematically underpaying its EMS workers. Specifically, the complaint alleges ...

Firefighters substituting for each other’s work shifts is common in today’s fire service. Most fire departments allow firefighters, and in some instances, other departmental employees the ability to freely substitute work shifts with each other. There are several reasons why so many fire departments allow personnel to substitute for each other. First and foremost is monetary. The FLSA and Department ...

An investigation conducted by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has found that the Rio Blanco County Sheriff’s Office violated the FLSA by not paying law enforcement officers for the time spent working before and after scheduled work shifts. The FLSA requires employers pay overtime eligible employees for all hours worked. This includes time spent before and after assigned work ...

A group of four firefighters have filed a lawsuit, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, alleging their employer, the Village of Winthrop Harbor, Illinois, underpaid them for overnight shifts and failed to pay overtime as required by the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Illinois Minimum Wage Law. The Village of Winthrop Harbor is a ...