Treasury bureau, union reach settlement on unpaid overtime

Hundreds of employees in the Treasury Department's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency could receive compensation for unpaid overtime under an agreement reached last week.

After more than a year of negotiations, the OCC and the National Treasury Employees Union reached a settlement granting workers back pay and damages for improperly paid overtime covering more than two years.

The union estimates that as many as 500 employees will be eligible for compensation. OCC has identified 43 employees so far who are entitled to back pay, agency spokesman Dean Debuck said. Additional employees might be identified, he added. "We did a restructuring back in 2001, and we discovered this problem and notified the union about it, then came to this agreement," Debuck said. "We would have done this without the union." The union filed a grievance against OCC in July 2003 after the agency reclassified certain positions from exempt to nonexempt status under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The union argued that the employees should be considered nonexempt under FLSA and, therefore, entitled to the full time-and-a-half overtime rate required by the law.

"The successful resolution of this grievance is another example of the many benefits of union representation," said NTEU President Colleen Kelley. "The work done by NTEU will mean that these OCC employees will get the appropriate pay for the work they performed for this agency."

OCC has not yet calculated the total amount that will be paid to workers. Debuck said eligible workers will have to file claims for their compensation. He said the agency will contact payroll centers in November to identify eligible employees, and then inform them how to file claims.

The settlement covers the period from July 1, 2001, to July 12, 2003. Eligible employees will be automatically paid the difference between what they received in overtime pay and what they should have received at the full time-and-a-half rate under FLSA, the union said.

Workers will also receive half their regular hourly rate of pay for each hour of compensatory time earned during the applicable recovery period.

"What's more, OCC will pay each affected employee an additional amount equal to 80 percent of her or his total back pay in what are known as liquidated damages for the initial misclassification of their position as being outside FLSA coverage," the union added.