More than 200 Indiana Firefighters File FLSA Lawsuit

Two-hundred and twenty-three Fort Wayne, Indiana firefighters have filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging the City of Fort Wayne isn’t calculating their overtime pay as required by the FLSA. The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana on August 15, 2024. The firefighters claim the city is calculating their regular and overtime rate of pay without including various contractually guaranteed wage augments. If the firefighter’s claims are proven, that would be a violation of the FLSA.

The FLSA requires all remuneration to be included in an employee’s regular rate of pay. The FLSA also requires that all federally required overtime be paid at a rate not less than time and one-half of the employee’s regular rate. When an employer does not include various wage augments [i.e., remuneration] in an employee’s regular rate, their overtime rate of pay is reduced below what is required by the law. Very often employer’s mistakenly base an employee’s overtime pay off of a base pay rate established by a collective bargaining agreement or city policy that does not include various wage augments. Some examples of these types of wage augments include: longevity pay, medic pay, educational incentives, and additional pay for specific assignments or skills such as HAZMAT, bi-lingual pay, and acting out-of-rank. Here is more from the firefighter’s complaint:

• The City has adopted an alternative 27-day work period under Section 7(k) of the FLSA. Accordingly, Plaintiffs must work 204 hours in a 27-day work period before the City is required to pay overtime under the FLSA.
• Pursuant to the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between Local 124 and the City, while working as members of the Department, plaintiffs are assigned to work one (1) twenty-four (24) hour shift, followed by forty-eight (48) hours off.
• This schedule is then repeated. This results in Plaintiffs being regularly scheduled to work 216 hours per 27-day FLSA work period.
• As such, Plaintiffs are regularly scheduled to work 12 hours of overtime. In addition to regularly scheduled overtime, Plaintiffs routinely work additional shifts, which causes them to work in excess of 204 hours in a work period.
• Pursuant to the CBA, the hourly rate used by the City for overtime calculations for Plaintiffs is calculated by dividing their designated annual salary set by position plus an annual lump sum longevity bonus by 2912 hours.
• In addition to Plaintiffs’ compensation for both regularly scheduled and additional hours of work, the City provides Department employees with additional compensation including, but not limited to, longevity pay, specialty team pay, technical pay, ancillary pay, education bonus, holiday pay, paramedic pay, SORT (Special Operations Team) pay and advanced EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) pay.
• At all times material herein, the City has failed on numerous occasions to incorporate these additional payments when calculating Plaintiffs’ regular rate for purposes of FLSA overtime compensation.
• The City has admitted to not calculating Plaintiffs’ regular rates correctly for purposes of overtime, and despite this admission, the City continues to incorrectly calculate Plaintiffs’ unscheduled overtime.

Proper calculation of a firefighter’s regular rate can be tricky. Firefighters frequently receive a wide variety of wage augments [similar to those listed in the complaint] in addition to an hourly wage. A challenge often associated with determining a fiefighter’s regular rate lies with determining the correct hourly equivalent of various wage augments and how to alocate that hourly equivalent to both scheduled and unscheduled overtime hours.

Do you have questions about the proper calculation of a firefighter’s regular rate? Please join us for the next FLSA for Fire Departments live seminar in Mesa, Arizona on October 1-3, 2024. This 24-hour three-day program covers a wide variety of FLSA topics that impact both firefighters and other civilian public safety professionals. These topics range from common overtime exemptions, comp time, compensability of travel, training, on-call time, off-the-clock work, and of course the proper calculation of an employee’s regular rate. Click here, for a more detailed description.

We will be keeping a close eye on this suit as it makes its way through the courts. Stay tuned for updates. Here is a copy of the complaint from Fort Wayne.