TO: All CWA Local 1081 Members
FROM: David H. Weiner, President
DATE: August 19, 2008
SUBJECT: CWA Local 1081 Members Paid Correct OT
CWA Local 1081 is proud to announce that our Union’s federal lawsuit against the County of Essex, protesting its having under-calculated and therefore underpaid our members who worked overtime for the Essex County Division of Welfare, has been settled and those affected CWA Local 1081 members have been finally paid the monies owed them.
The retroactive overtime payments to our members whom were plaintiffs to our Union’s lawsuit ranged from as little as $4 to as much as $400 per person.
CWA Local 1081 thanks our Union’s attorney, Annmarie Pinarski, Esq. for her excellent work resolving this case to the benefit of those members of our Union that had been plaintiffs as well as to the benefit of all members of CWA Local 1081 that work overtime and that will be paid correctly from now on.
Our Union also thanks newly-appointed CWA Local 1081 Financial Secretary Hemesh Shah, a Family Service Worker with our agency, for his invaluable assistance in helping us achieve this momentous victory!
Immediately below this memorandum, please note an article published today describing a similar situation affecting employees of the State of Indiana which took them fifteen years to finally resolve in the employees’ favor.
State could pay employees $8.5M to settle lawsuit
Employees sued after working more hours than others for same pay from '73-'93; state could shell out $8.5M
By Christine Won
Posted: August 19, 2008
For 20 years, the state required some of its employees to work more hours than those in other state agencies yet paid them the same.
Now it appears the state is going to pay for that decision -- as much as $8.5 million.
The state reached a tentative agreement Monday on a class-action lawsuit that could affect an estimated 15,000 state employees who, from 1973 to 1993, worked 40-hour weeks but received the same pay as others in similar jobs who worked 37.5 hours a week.
The lawsuit was filed 15 years ago but was delayed repeatedly. The suit was scheduled to go to trial today.
"I've waited 15 years for this," said Jennie Veregge, who still works as a legal clerk at Richmond State Hospital. "For now, I'm just happy we've come to this point."
John Kautzman, the attorney representing the plaintiffs, said the state would fully compensate the affected employees up to $8.5 million, including compensation pay for those extra 2.5 hours per week, fees and expenses. Attempts to reach the state attorney general's office for comment were unsuccessful.
Claim forms will be available to potentially affected current and former state employees in the next month, and they will have 45 days to file them. A judge will determine who is entitled and what requirements have to be met. For example, it's not clear whether families of employees who have died during the past 15 years will be compensated.
According to Kautzman, if the calculated total amount exceeds $8.5 million, the state can back out of the settlement and resume trial or pay off the remainder. A tentative hearing is scheduled for mid-October.
"We're thrilled we have brought 100 percent relief to all potentially affected claimants," Kautzman said on behalf of his Downtown law firm, Ruckelshaus Kautzman Blackwell Bemis & Hasbrook.
Most employees were left guessing just how much money they are owed.
Hypothetically, if a person made $10 an hour for the entire 20-year period, he or she would stand to receive about $26,000. If an employee made $5 an hour and worked for one year, that employee would be entitled to $650.
David Larson, a former prison guard who is retired, can't say for certain, but he figures the state owes him $5,000 to $6,000 for the nine years he worked 40-hour weeks at correctional centers in Tell City and Pendleton.
He's excited to get the money, but he's more excited that he and so many others are finally receiving their just due.
"I was aware for quite some time that others worked 37.5-hour weeks, but I didn't realize they were being paid the same amount as I was," Larson said. "I figured they were being paid less."
He found out only after he became the president of the Indiana State Employees Association.
"We didn't even get lunch breaks and had to work straight through," he said. "It's only right that everybody's treated equally."
The unequal pay system ended two months after the lawsuit was filed in 1993, when the state mandated 37.5-hour weeks across the board.
"I guess the state woke up to the problem when we filed the lawsuit," Kautzman said. "It was a widespread issue in the state."
The 1993 lawsuit was the second of its kind. In 1991, 35 state employees sued after they learned about the discrepancy.
That suit received a boost when an appellate court affirmed an existing state regulation guaranteeing equal pay for equal work. The Indiana Supreme Court agreed in 1992, and the state stopped the practice in 1993.
But that still left all the state employees who worked without compensatory pay for the additional 2.5 hours a week during the period from 1973 to 1993.
That led to the second lawsuit, filed in 1993.
"It just demoralizes you," Veregge said, "if you're in the same pay class but you have to work 40 hours to make the same amount as someone working 37.5 hours, working for the same state."