Tag Archives: first responders

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 ...

The long running legal battle between the City of Morgantown, West Virginia and its firefighters over holiday pay does not appear to be coming to an end anytime soon. This past week city firefighters filed an amended complaint in state court claiming the city owes firefighters almost $6.5 million after years of improperly calculating their holiday pay. The firefighters had ...

The City of Eaton, Ohio has settled a lawsuit filed by four current and former fire department employees for a total of $185,000. The lawsuit, which was filed in 2019 by four of the department’s five full-time employees, contained two basic allegations. The first allegation was that the city misclassified the four full-time fire department employees as overtime exempt executive ...

Seventeen Fire Captains from Marion County Fire and Rescue (MCFR), in Marion County, Florida have reached a settlement with the county following a 2019 lawsuit alleging they were misclassified as overtime exempt executives. The settlement, which still must be approved by the court, requires the county to pay a total of $725,000 to the captains and their attorneys. The settlement ...

The Fire Law Group is pleased to announce a series of advanced live three-hour webinars dedicated to the most important and challenging FLSA wage and hour issues impacting fire departments, firefighters, and other public safety professionals today. The first is scheduled for Wednesday, October 20, 2021 and is entitled: Calculating Regular Rate for Firefighters and other First Responders. This program ...

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 ...

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 ...

Today’s FLSA Question: Can a fire department’s collective bargaining agreement limit the amount of FLSA compensatory time (comp time) a firefighter can accrue to only 240 hours? The current contract allows firefighters to accrue up to 480 hours of FLSA comp time. A new city administrator wants to negotiate with the firefighter’s union in an effort to lower the city’s ...

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 ...