By Daniel Pye<br><a href="mailto:pyed@gnnewspaper.com">E-mail Dan</a>
The Tonawanda News
May 07, 2008 01:50 am
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TOWN OF TONAWANDA — A $625,000 settlement has ended a lawsuit filed by 120 current and former town police officers against the town for unpaid overtime.
The lawsuit covered a period spanning 2003 to 2005, during which the officers claimed they were cheated out of overtime they were owed under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, according to Town Attorney Daniel Cavarello.
“This is a very complicated piece of legislation, and claims like this have been brought all over the country,” Cavarello said.
Jobs where employees work non-traditional shifts, such as police officers who work four days on and take three days off, make complying with the law especially difficult, Cavarello said.
Although the town had good defenses for some of the claims and might have won the case if it had gone to court, the sheer number of claims would have made the process difficult and mediators recommended a settlement, Cavarello said.
Nearly one-third of the settlement will go to settle legal fees and the rest will be divided equally among the 120 employees involved in the suit, even though each person had a different amount of overtime claimed.
“My understanding is that was their agreement amongst themselves,” Cavarello said of the split. “That would give each of them around $3,600.”
The settlement was approved by all four members of the town board, while Supervisor Anthony Caruana abstained from the vote.
Steps are being taken to ensure that no similar claims are filed in the future, including tweaks to the way computerized and handwritten records are kept, said Police Chief Anthony Palombo.
“It turned out to be changing a little bit the way we’re keeping records,” Palombo said. “We weren’t that far off.”
Part of the problem was the fact that the current contract negotiated by the police union was in conflict with provisions in the Fair Labor Standards Act. Those issues will be addressed within the department to reinterpret the contract since the national law trumps any agreement, Palombo said.
In the end, the settlement means neither party had to admit fault for the mix up, Palombo said.
“This was just a business decision on the part of the town and the union,” he said.
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