The town has tentatively agreed to pay a total of more than $101,000 to employees of the Brookline Fire Department to settle a class action lawsuit regarding unpaid overtime wages.
Last December, Lieutenants Brian Bergeron and Paul Trahon, leaders of the union representing Brookline firefighters, sued the town for allegedly violating the Fair Labor Standards Act by failing to pay some employees overtime pay on time or at all. Later, 117 other members signed on to the class action suit.
The union, Local 950 of the International Association of Fire Fighters, represents Brookline firefighters, fire lieutenants, fire captains and deputy chiefs. The union’s contract states that employees working more than 212 hours in a 28-day period should receive time-and-a-half overtime pay — compensation that the suit alleged many of the union members had not always received from 2020 to 2024.
“It’s one of those things where people didn’t know what they were missing,” Bergeron told Brookline.News in an interview. “All these people were owed all this money but they had no idea that they were even owed it.”
The town had miscalculated overtime pay for more than 100 union employees by failing to add overtime pay to “regular rates,” the complaint alleged, a miscalculation that occurred for scheduled shifts and shifts swapped between employees. Many of the overtime pay errors were made in late 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when employees would exchange shifts due to sickness or exposure to the virus, Bergeron said.
Since the lawsuit was filed, union leaders have been working with the town’s public safety business office to determine how much money was owed to employees and create a new system, which is included in the tentative settlement agreement, for keeping track of overtime pay.
The town willingly collaborated with the union to correct its mistakes and was “not doing anything malicious,” Bergeron said.
“The town had continued to express a desire to get it figured out and worked out,” he said.
In the tentative settlement agreement filed in court on Nov. 20, which was signed by lawyers for both the union and the town, the town did not admit liability, but agreed to pay $101,604.22, divided among 73 of the firefighters.
It’s unclear whether town leaders have given final approval to the settlement. The Select Board discussed the case during its Dec. 3 meeting, but did so in an executive session, which was closed to the public. A spokesperson for the town declined to comment when asked about the settlement by Brookline.News.
In addition to Select Board approval, there are several other steps before the agreement can be finalized. The town’s Advisory Committee must also approve it, and is planning to meet on Dec. 19 to discuss the settlement. Then, all plaintiffs must sign a release form before any employees can receive checks, which John Becker, an attorney representing the 119 union members, predicted will begin early next year.
Becker said the settlement agreement corrects the town’s missteps and the union is satisfied with the changes that will be made.
“The relationship between town and union can sometimes be contentious, but I think this was a case where everybody really worked hard together and we all made some compromises,” Becker said. “We came to a result that I think is fair to employees but is also fair to the townspeople of Brookline who pay taxes.”