Tag Archives: regulations

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 ...

A federal judge in South Carolina has dismissed an FLSA misclassification lawsuit filed by a former firefighter/medic without the need for a trail. United States District Court Judge Bruce Howe Hendricks granted Jasper County’s request to dismiss the 2021 lawsuit filed by Heather Davis, a former firefighter/medic for Jasper County’s Emergency Services Department. In the lawsuit, Davis alleged that the ...

A Lancaster, Pennsylvania, firefighter has dropped an FLSA regular rate lawsuit pending a potential settlement. Geoff Stone, the president of the Lancaster Professional Firefighters, IAFF Local 319 filed the lawsuit on behalf of himself and other firefighters in federal court in October, 2023. Chief among his allegations was that the city failed to include longevity pay in his [and other ...

Two similar FLSA lawsuits have been filed by firefighters from two different West Virginia cities in the past week. The first, which my friend and colleague Curt Varone covered on his Fire Law Blog last Wednesday, contained allegations that the City of Clarksburg was improperly calculating its firefighter’s regular rate of pay in violation of the FLSA. [You can find ...

A lieutenant from the Warren Township Fire Department, in Warren, Ohio has filed a lawsuit against his employer claiming the department’s pay practices violate several provisions of the FLSA.  Lieutenant Gregory Wrightsman filed the lawsuit on behalf of himself and other “similarly situated” individuals [i.e., other firefighters that may eventually join in on the lawsuit] in the United States District ...

Today’s Advanced FLSA Question: What are the potential wage and hour concerns associated with sending non-exempt firefighters out of state to spec and/or inspect new fire apparatus? Answer: Good question. Believe it or not, this is a very advanced question. Allowing overtime eligible employees [like firefighters] to engage in work-related travel without considering the potential wage and hour implications is ...

Today’s FLSA Question: I am a fulltime chief of a combination fire department. We have a mix of volunteer and paid firefighters. Like many folks, we are struggling with recruitment and retention within all of our ranks, but especially within our volunteers. Recently, some of our neighboring departments began offering their volunteers an hourly rate instead of a stipend. Some ...

Today’s FLSA Question: I am the administrator for a fulltime fire and EMS district. We have several personnel that work part-time collateral positions within our organization. These collateral positions include training officer, EMS coordinator, and HAZMAT officer. Personnel receive overtime when working in these capacities outside of their normal work hours, however they also spend a great deal of their ...

A group of twenty-four current and former “District Chiefs” from the Orlando Fire Department have filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging the city misclassified them as overtime exempt employees in violation of the FLSA. This lawsuit is the latest in a series of similar lawsuits filed by high-ranking fire officers from across the country seeking overtime pay. Quoting from ...

Over 400 current and former Los Angeles City Fire Department firefighter/medics have filed a federal lawsuit against the city alleging violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The lawsuit, which was filed in the United States District Court for the Central District of California earlier this summer contains allegations that the city misclassified hundreds of firefighter/medics as employees engaged ...