She worked over 3,000 overtime hours, Columbus lawsuit says. Now she’s getting paid.
The Muscogee County School District has settled a federal lawsuit a former employee filed for alleged unpaid overtime during a period of approximately three years.
MCSD agreed to pay Brenda Perkins $65,327.50 to settle all legal claims in the lawsuit filed April 2019 in the Columbus division of the U.S. District Court.
During its monthly meeting Tuesday night, the Muscogee County School Board, without public discussion, unanimously approved the settlement recommended by the superintendent and legal counsel.
Perkins sought damages under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
According to the lawsuit, Perkins was hired in November 1998 and worked for 15 years as the administrative assistant to the director of the program for exceptional students, also known as special education.
In 2012, she was “dubbed federal funding assistant” by the human resources director, the lawsuit says, and gradually was “assigned many and varied duties” during the three years before the complaint was filed since the chief of student services resigned. She also was called upon to transcribe tribunal hearings, according to the lawsuit.
That caused her to “not accomplish her duties within 40 hours per week,” the lawsuit says. Perkins typically worked from as early as 6 a.m. to as late as 8 p.m. or later at least four days per week, as well as Saturdays, according to the lawsuit.
Perkins, however, was required to “maintain a time sheet with no more than 40 hours per week displayed,” the lawsuit says, while typically working 13 hours per day or 65 hours per week, not including working Saturdays.
Although she was required to deduct one hour for a lunch break, she rarely was afforded such time and ate lunch while working, according to the lawsuit. She worked approximately 5½ hours of overtime per day, despite being expected to record on her time sheet that she arrived at 8 a.m. and departed at 5 p.m., the lawsuit says.
“Defendant’s coerced required manual time sheets are bogus and intentionally calculated to avoid overtime liability,” the lawsuit says.
During the period in question, Perkins’ wage was $14.86 per hour, so her overtime wage would have been $22.29 per hour, according to the lawsuit. Working no less than 27.5 hours per week of overtime across 117 weeks and adding 71.8 hours of overtime for working Saturdays, the cumulative overtime wage MCSD owed Perkins was $73,318.13, the lawsuit says.
Based on the figures provided in the lawsuit, the total overtime hours come to 3,289.
The Fair Labor Standards Act allows the amount to be doubled for liquidated damages, meaning a penalty for breaching a contract. So the lawsuit sought a total of $146,636.25 in damages, plus attorney fees.
Melanie Slaton of Hall Booth Smith in Columbus represented MCSD in the case. She emailed the Ledger-Enquirer the following statement Wednesday:
“The Muscogee County School District denies that Ms. Brenda Perkins worked more than 3,000 hours of overtime, along with other allegations and inaccuracies within the lawsuit, which alleged any intentional violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act or any other wrongdoing during Ms. Perkins’ employment with the District. The District strives to comply with all Federal and State laws concerning wages and all other aspects of employment to ensure its employees are protected and treated fairly. The District made a good-faith business decision to resolve this matter in the best interest of the District as a whole.”
Perkins’ lawyer in the case, John Roper of The Roper Law Firm in Columbus, declined to comment for this story.
This story was originally published February 19, 2020 at 3:58 PM.
