A fire department in the San Diego-area failed to pay battalion chiefs the overtime they were owed under federal law. One of the chiefs alleged a proposed a collective action in California federal court.
In a complaint filed on last week, Encinitas Fire Department Battalion Chief James Mickelson claimed that he and other battalion chiefs were knowingly and maliciously misclassified as exempt from Federal Labor Standards Act overtime protections, demanding three years of back wages.
"[The city of Encinitas] improperly treated employees of its Fire Department … as exempt from overtime compensation," Mickelson said. "[The city's] failure to properly compensate plaintiff and all similarly situated individuals for overtime hours worked was a willful violation of the FLSA."
Although the FLSA requires employers to compensate employees at one-and-a-half times their normal rates for overtime work, some classes of employees, including salaried workers, managers with hiring and firing powers, and firefighters who work in departments with fewer than five employees on duty at any given time, are exempt from overtime pay requirements.
In his complaint, Mickelson did not specify why the beach town, located thirty minutes north of San Diego, declared him and other battalion chief’s ineligible for overtime pay.
However, according to a 2020 report issued by the Encinitas Fire Department, which publicly releases annual reports detailing the previous year's operations, the city, which shares employees and resources with two neighboring towns, employs roughly 100 firefighters and support staff across eight fire stations. Those employment figures are well above the five-firefighter threshold that exempts small-town departments from overtime obligations.
The FLSA also states that firefighters, rather than accruing overtime pay after working over 40 hours in a given workweek, may only begin accruing overtime rates if they average more than roughly seven and a half hours of work per day over a given work period, which can range between seven and 28 consecutive days of work.
In his complaint, Mickelson said he was unable to determine how many hours he worked or how much overtime pay he allegedly should have accrued but pointed out that Encinitas maintains the duty to track and preserve payroll records that would clarify his work schedule.
The department's annual reports also shed some light on the potential size of Mickelson's proposed class of battalion chiefs. According to reports issued in 2019 and 2020, the Encinitas, Solana Beach and Del Mar fire departments, which share a single organizational umbrella, employed four battalion chiefs, including Mickelson, between them.
Mickelson's allegations of the city's willful violations of federal wage law shift the scope of any potential damages. The FLSA typically provides workers with a two-year statute of limitations to sue their employers for unpaid wages, but it extends that window to three years in the case of willful FLSA infringement.
If Mickelson can convince a jury that Encinitas' alleged violations were willful, he could claim as damages unpaid overtime dating back to 2019. If any alleged FLSA violations are found to be unintentional, however, the proposed class's damages would be backdated only to 2020.