BLOOMINGDALE, Mich. — A recent lawsuit says a school system in Van Buren County and its staffing agency violated federal law when they did not pay an employee overtime.
“It’s important for people to be paid for the work they do and to be paid in accordance with the law,” said Rob Howard, an attorney at Cunningham Dalman, P.C.
Howard represents Amanda Gonzalez, the woman who brought forth the complaint against Bloomingdale Public Schools and Edustaff last month. Two additional people signed onto it this week.
Through Edustaff, a Grand Rapids-based employment agency, Gonzalez works in the kitchen and as a custodian at the district’s high school.
“Let’s say she worked 40 hours in the kitchen and 30 hours as a custodian that week,” said Howard. “She was not getting paid any overtime.”
Howard says Gonzalez never encountered any issues until this past April when Edustaff told Bloomingdale it interpreted labor laws for employees in combined roles incorrectly.
Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, employers must pay overtime if someone works more than 40 hours a week.
For example, one of Gonzalez’s pay stubs from the month before the discovery shows she clocked two and a half extra hours, only to be paid the regular rate.
“You're performing work for one employer,” Howard explained. “If I was working in a fast food restaurant and I was the cashier, and then on Saturday I was assigned to clean, if I work over 40 hours, I should get overtime regardless of what my duties may be for that employer.”
The lawsuit says the district agreed to correct the problem in the future but did not address any back pay for impacted employees.
According to Howard, they can recover up to three years of overtime wages under the law. He thinks the amount owed to Gonzalez totals around $5,000.
“That’s an amount that can cover your house payment for a few months, that can allow you to catch up on some bills,” said Howard. “It’s money that they should have had available to them through the time that they perform these duties, but they were shorted.”
While confident the money in this case can be recovered, Howard worries for those elsewhere.
“The email that we saw from Edustaff to the Bloomingdale Public Schools made it appear that this may have been a corporate policy of Edustaff’s that may affect employees in other districts who are also performing these dual roles for a single employer,” said Howard. “They're in numerous districts across the state, they're in 10 other states, so we just don't know how wide this problem could be and that's something we hope to find out during discovery.”
According to its website, Edustaff serves over 550 public school districts nationwide.
A spokesperson for the agency and Bloomingdale’s declined to comment due to the pending lawsuit.
Howard says no one should work without pay.
“Everybody likes to be paid for their time,” said Howard. “This law was put into place to protect employees.”
People with a wage issue, including unpaid overtime, can file a complaint with the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity. Click here for the form.
