CITY TO PAY $3.4M TO FIREFIGHTERS

San Diego to compensate 700 for underpaid overtime from years ago

SAN DIEGO

San Diego agreed this week to pay $3.4 million to more than 700 city firefighters to compensate them for underpaid overtime they should have received several years ago. The payout comes six months after the city reached a similar legal settlement with more than 2,300 other city workers for the same kind of underpaid overtime.

The cases were handled separately because overtime calculations differ for firefighters, who work 24hour shifts that include sleeping overnight in firehouses.

The City Council Tuesday unanimously approved the new firefighter settlement, which covers threequarters of the city's 943 firefighters.

The payouts aren't expected to have a significant impact on the budget crisis San Diego is facing during the pandemic. The city expected to owe large payouts in the underpaid overtime cases, so money was set aside before the budget crisis.

The lawsuits are based on a 2016 federal appeals court ruling against the city of San Gabriel that created a new interpretation of how employers should calculate overtime pay for workers. Instead of basing overtime on a worker's hourly wage, the ruling said that overtime should be based on the worker's hourly wage plus an estimate of the value of fringe benefits they receive, such as health coverage.

Multiplying an employee's hourly rate of pay by one and a half, which had been the normal practice, became insufficient. Employers now must adjust the hourly rate to include the value of medical care and then multiply that by one and a half.

Shortly after the 2016 ruling by