Current and former Federal Emergency Management Agency employees may soon be able to benefit from a $16.5 million settlement over unpaid overtime, the American Federation of Government Employees said this week.
AFGE Local 4060, the union that represents FEMA employees, said the settlement stems from a Fair Labor Standards Act overtime grievance. It alleged that FEMA employees “were improperly denied FLSA coverage and were not being properly compensated for all overtime work performed,” AFGE Local 1060 President Steven Reaves wrote in a message to members.
AFGE filed the grievance against FEMA in March 2018, according to a 2020 post from the Law Offices of Snider & Associates, one of the firms retained by the union for the case. By 2020, FEMA and AFGE had agreed to pause arbitration and initiated attempts to settle the case.
The “bulk” of the $16.5 million settlement is related to employee compensation and will be distributed to eligible current and former employees by the Class Action Implementation Group (CAIG), according to Reaves.
Eligibility and payment amounts will be based on “various factors and relevant data,” including information that FEMA will need to provide to AFGE, its attorneys and the CAIG, Reaves wrote.
“I recognize that there are and will be questions concerning eligibility, entitlement, participation, and payments,” he continued. “We cannot answer these questions until all of the information necessary to determine eligibility and ensure a proper...
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