Tag Archives: maximum hours

Today’s FLSA Question: I am the union president for a mid-sized municipal fire department. Our labor agreement allows us to conduct an annual bid. Basically, all shift personnel bid by seniority in rank to a specific platoon (A, B, or C) and piece of apparatus once a year. The only “catch” is that the bid must occur at “no-cost” to ...

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 ...

Today’s FLSA Question: I have been a part-time firefighter working for a small non-union municipal fire department for more than 5 years. My department augments full-time staff with part-timers, like myself. Historically, working as a part-time firefighter was the best way to get a job as a full-time firefighter. Up until recently, the department’s part-time firefighters were limited to a ...

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 ...

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; ...

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 ...

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

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 ...

Today’s FLSA Question: I am a city human resources manager. Our city’s firefighters work 24 hours on-duty, followed by 48 hours off-duty for an average of 56 hours per week. Currently, the city utilizes a 27-day work period for line firefighters. However, our firefighters are paid bi-weekly. Therefore, firefighters frequently do not get paid for their overtime until two or ...