Tag Archives: employees engaged in fire protection activities

Today’s FLSA Question: I work for a municipal fire department. Everybody that works for the city [including the fire department] is paid on a weekly basis. However, firefighters do not receive overtime pay on a weekly basis. The firefighters overtime pay is included in every fourth paycheck. Why do firefighters have to wait? By the way, other city employees don’t ...

Humphreys County, Tennessee is the latest public employer to face an FLSA lawsuit filed by its employees. A group of six current and former workers from the county’s sheriff’s office filed the lawsuit on behalf of themselves and other similarly situated individuals in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee on October 31, 2022. The plaintiffs, four ...

A group of four in-house firefighters that work for Lockheed Martin Corp.’s aircraft plant in Marietta, Georgia recently filed a lawsuit against the corporation alleging the company fails to pay overtime as required by federal law. The lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia on April 6, contains allegations that the defense ...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has found that the City of Kansas City, MO did not violate the FLSA when it adopted a new pay plan for fire department medics and classified existing Fire Medics as employees engaged in fire protection activities (a.k.a. §207(k) firefighters). The lawsuit was filed in 2017 by two different groups of ...

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 ...

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. ...

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 ...

How important is establishing a qualifying work period for §207(k) firefighters? Officials from the Village of Highland Hills, a small suburb outside of Cleveland, found out this past week. In a succinct easy to read six-page opinion, U.S. District Court Judge James S. Gwin, found that the village had not established a work period and was therefore unable to claim ...

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 ...

In this Vlog, Curt Varone and I discuss a recent federal court decision that invalidated one Texas fire departments use of the FLSA’s §207(k) partial overtime exemption for firefighter/medics assigned to EMS companies. Here is more on this important ruling. Ruling in FF/Medics’ FLSA Overtime Lawsuit Stresses Importance of FD Policies and Procedures