2 counties settle OT claims for $3 million
By Kevin Dayton
Advertiser Big Island Bureau
HILO, Hawai'i — Maui and Big Island officials have finalized two settlements worth a total of $3 million to compensate police, firefighters and a handful of other public workers for overtime the counties allegedly failed to pay them.
A settlement proposal in a similar case is still being negotiated by Kaua'i County, and a much larger claim for alleged failure to pay proper overtime pay to Honolulu police and firefighters is still pending, said Alex Garcia, O'ahu unit chairman of the State of Hawai'i Organization of Police Officers.
Garcia said the amount allegedly owed by Honolulu could total four or five times the $1.8 million settlement agreed to by the Hawai'i County Council and Mayor Harry Kim's administration.
Federal Magistrate Kevin Chang approved the settlements in both the Maui and Big Island cases in U.S. District Court in Honolulu yesterday, said Ted Hong, a lawyer representing the Big Island and Kaua'i counties in the cases.
A total of 221 current and former police officers and firefighters and other county employees joined in the class-action suit on the Big Island, and that group will receive payments ranging from $1,500 to $32,500 before lawyers' fees, according to county records. Some other county employees will receive smaller amounts. The records indicate the lawyers' fees amount to about a third of each individual payment.
The highest payments generally went to employees who worked the most overtime during the years covered by the lawsuit, or to senior employees who earn the highest pay, Hong said.
The Maui County settlement requires that the county pay $1.2 million to cover similar claims by 122 plaintiffs. The individual employees in that case will receive payments ranging from $2,700 to $34,000.
Big Island officials agreed to the settlement to resolve claims under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act that from 1999 to 2002 the county failed to pay police and firefighters the correct overtime rate, and didn't pay the county employees properly for hours they were required to work.
The lawsuit alleged Hawai'i County didn't pay police or firefighters for time they spent on activities such as mandatory medical exams, serving as instructors for classes, work-related travel, briefings before and after their shifts, missed meal breaks, or cleaning and maintaining county vehicles, according to records on file with the Big Island County Clerk.
Officer Emory J. Springer, Big Island SHOPO chapter chairman, said officers receive standard-of-conduct pay and differentials that increase their pay for working certain shifts, and the counties failed to figure in that extra pay when calculating overtime.
Bobby Lee, president of the Hawai'i Fire Fighters Association, said many of the Big Island firefighters' claims concerned overtime when firefighters were called back to work because of personnel shortages. Another issue was firefighters who earned time off in lieu of overtime pay, but were unable to take that comp time off because of staff shortages.
Lee said about 600 O'ahu firefighters — or more than half of Honolulu's fire crew members — have signed up to participate in the similar suit pending against Honolulu.1
