April 2, 2001
(BOSTON) - A newspaper reports that six Boston police officers who filed suit claiming that the city owes them overtime pay were among the highest-paid officers in the department. The Boston Herald examined payroll records and found that the six plaintiffs received a total of $735,000 in overtime in the past four years. John A. Conway, Assigned to the special operations division, made $185,000 on top of his regular pay.
The suit claims that time-and-one-half for overtime should be calculated not from an officer’s base pay, as the city has been doing it, but on an hourly rate including differentials for shift work, education incentives and other extras.
A union official told the Herald that the officers worked a lot of overtime because they were assigned to it and said the issue is the justice of the overtime rate, not the officers’ total paychecks.
Lawyers for the six say they expect hundreds of other officers to join the six.