Tag Archives: Department of Labor

Settlement Reached in Indiana FLSA Retaliation Lawsuit

The City of Tipton, Indiana has reached a a settlement with a veteran firefighter following an FLSA overtime and retaliation lawsuit. The Tipton City Council unanimously approved a maximum settlement of $18,763.42 to resolve a lawsuit filed last fall by veteran city firefighter Chad Frazier. Firefighter Frazier brought the lawsuit in September of 2020, alleging the city failed to pay ...

Read More »

TX Firefighters Frustrated with Payroll Problems Months After Cyber-Attack Consider FLSA Suit

The City of Texarkana, Texas is struggling to rebuild its internal payroll functions following a December 2020 cyber-attack. The attack, which corrupted and destroyed payroll data maintained by the city’s finance and human resource departments was initially discovered on December 6, 2020. In response to the breach, the city continued to pay impacted employees based on the last known accurate ...

Read More »

NC Paramedic Files FLSA Overtime Lawsuit Against County

A Wake County, North Carolina paramedic has filed a federal lawsuit alleging the county’s time tracking system fails to pay paramedics overtime as required by the FLSA. Paramedic Steven Gorrell filed this lawsuit, on behalf of himself and other similarly situated individuals, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina on March 16, 2021. [As a ...

Read More »

The City of Lawrence, KS agrees to pay almost $1 Million in back OT to several dozen police sergeants, fire captains, and other city employees following FLSA review

The City of Lawrence, Kansas has voluntarily agreed to pay $998,600 to 24 police sergeants, 21 fire captains, and 3 other city employees following a recent FLSA review. The review, which was requested by a group of fire captains in 2019, found that the city improperly classified numerous city employees as overtime exempt. As a result of the city’s misclassification ...

Read More »

Quarterly Overtime Payments and the FLSA

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; ...

Read More »

Cobb County Settles FLSA Suit with Fire Captain

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 ...

Read More »

Maryland Fire Investigators and County Settle FLSA Lawsuit

A group of fire investigators from the Prince George’s County Fire Department have settled an overtime lawsuit they filed last summer. The lawsuit, which was filed in federal court on June 18, 2020, on behalf of fourteen county fire investigators, alleged the county’s pay practices violated the FLSA. Specifically, the investigators claimed the county improperly classified them as §207(k) firefighters. ...

Read More »

The FLSA’s §207(k) Exemption May Not Be an Option for Some Fire Departments

Today’s FLSA Question: I am a full-time paid fire chief for a private non-profit volunteer fire company. Over the past twenty-five years our organization has grown and required the hiring of several daytime staff personnel (training chief, fire marshal, assistant chief) to augment our core of volunteer and paid-on-call firefighters. But we are now in the process of hiring our ...

Read More »