Tag Archives: Fair Labor Standards Act

Oklahoma Firefighters Claim Regular Rate Violations in Lawsuit Against City

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 ...

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Firefighters, Mandatory COVID-19 Testing & the FLSA

This is the second of several posts dedicated to answering questions asked by attendees at the recent FLSA for Fire Departments live webinar. If you have questions like this, please consider attending the next live webinar in February 2021. FLSA Question: We require mandatory weekly COVID tests for all of our firefighters. We pay off-duty firefighters four hours of overtime ...

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Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Extinguishes VA Battalion Chiefs OT Claims

In an important and highly anticipated decision, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld a 2019 federal court decision denying FLSA overtime for seven Chesapeake, Virginia Battalion Chiefs without the need of a trial. While this decision, which was handed down unanimously by a three-judge panel last Friday, only applies to a small handful of battalion ...

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TN County Settles FLSA Misclassification Lawsuit with Two EMS Captains

Montgomery County, Tennessee has reached a settlement with two supervisory paramedics following a 2019 FLSA lawsuit for unpaid overtime. Emergency Medical Services Captain Gary Perry initially filed the lawsuit, on October 28, 2019. Perry’s main allegation related to the county’s failure to pay him and other EMS Captains overtime as required by the FLSA. Perry also claimed the county misclassified ...

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Uniform Allowances and the FLSA

This is the first of several posts dedicated to answering questions asked by attendees at the recent FLSA for Fire Departments live webinar. If you have questions like this, please consider attending the next live webinar in February 2021. FLSA Question: Can uniform allowances paid to police officers and firefighters be excluded from the regular rate of pay? Does the ...

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Claims of Unpaid Overtime and Possible FLSA Retaliation for an Ohio City

A Columbiana Ohio, police officer recently filed a rather straight-forward lawsuit containing allegations of unpaid overtime. Patrolman Bryan Granchie, a K-9 officer for the Columbiana Police Department filed the lawsuit, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, alleging the city failed to pay him for hours worked caring for his K-9 work partner “Csuti.” Lawsuits for ...

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Firefighters, Daylight Savings Time, and the FLSA

Does your state participate in daylight savings time? Most likely, you answered yes to this question. Now, in addition to changing the batteries on your smoke and CO detectors, have you considered how daylights savings time may impact a firefighter’s hours worked? Since it is getting to be that time of year again, here is a post from FirefighterOvertime.org dating ...

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Capping Firefighter Overtime, Collective Bargaining, and the FLSA

Today’s FLSA Question: I am a newly appointed fire chief involved in my first contract negotiations with the city’s firefighter union. Understandably, staffing and overtime are hot button topics. The city’s attorney has proposed capping overtime pay at a preset figure on an annual basis. For example, she proposed capping firefighter overtime at $250,000 annually during the term of the ...

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