Lawsuit Settled with School Bus Company

A school bus company, First Student Inc. which is operated in Maryland, has agreed to pay $1.5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit involving overtime pay. Employees that were bus drivers and aides, brought this on because the lawsuit alleged that First Student had avoided paying overtime compensation to the employees by recording the employee’s various duties separately. If an employee spent 30 hours per week driving a school bus and 20 hours training other people, the employee’s time spent working would not be documented as a 50-hour workweek. The time spent working would be recorded separately so as to indicate that the person worked less than 40 hours that particular week instead. The Fair Labor Standard Act, the federal act governing wage and hour issues such as overtime compensation, requires an employer to pay one-time-and-a-half the rate of an employee’s pay when the employee works more the 40 hours per week.