in Newswire Published on October 4, 2017

40 Plaintiffs Allege City of San Diego Miscalculated Wage Rates, Owes OT

Last Updated on May 8, 2018

Mitchell et al. v. City of San Diego

Filed: September 29, 2017 ◆§ 3:17-cv-02014-H-AGS

A collection of participants in the City of San Diego's Flex Benefits Plan say their hourly wages rates and OT pay rates were miscalculated by their employer.

Defendant(s)

City of San Diego

Law(s)

State(s)

California

Categories

Government Wage and Hour

Forty plaintiffs have put their names on a proposed class action lawsuit that alleges the City of San Diego miscalculated the regular hourly pay rates of participants in the city’s Flexible Benefits Plan by failing to account for left over “flex dollars” as eligible renumeration, i.e. compensation for work performed for the city’s benefit, and thusly owes unpaid overtime wages.

The complaint says that the city notified its employees by email on June 30, 2017 that, effective July 1, San Diego “will include in an employee’s FLSA overtime calculations the cash value of any flexible benefit credits that they did not use to pay for health, dental, vision, or life insurance” in accordance with recent changes to federal law. Those changes, the case notes, can be traced back to Flores v. City of San Gabriel, wherein it was mandated that flex-spending dollars are considered “renumeration” for the purposes of calculating an employee’s regular rate of pay and, therefore, hourly overtime rate. From the lawsuit:

“The City failed to count or include these cash-in-lieu of benefits payments under its [Flexible Benefits Plan] as renumeration when determining an employee’s ‘regular rate of pay. Because the City excluded these payments, they are not incorporated into the City’s calculation of the employee’s overtime rate. In this manner, the City underpaid [the plaintiffs] and others similarly-situated for FLSA-eligible overtime hours worked because the premium overtime rates paid did not represent time-and-one-half their eligible ‘regular rates’ of pay.”

The full complaint can be read below.

40 Plaintiffs Allege City of San Diego Miscalculated Wage Rates, Owes OT

Mitchell et al. v. City of San Diego

Hair Relaxer Lawsuits

Sign Up For
Our Newsletter

Mitchell et al. v. City of San Diego

Hair Relaxer Lawsuits

Sign Up For Our Newsletter

Sign Up For
Our Newsletter