A 9-year-old lawsuit claiming the Secret Service failed to pay the full amount of overtime owed to its agents is one step closer to a resolution.

The trial currently focuses on Richard Naltner, a current special agent hired by the Secret Service in October 2007, and David Deetz, a former special agent from 1998 to 2018.

The plaintiffs claim the Secret Service failed to pay them standard overtime pay for certain protective hours worked between 2014 and 2018.

The United States Court of Federal Claims, in a decision of October 29denied the Secret Service’s motion for summary judgment in the case.

Lawyers representing the Secret Service agents plan to file a motion for class certification next week.

Nicholas Wieczorek, a partner at Clark Hill representing Secret Service agents in the lawsuit, said the motion, if granted, would allow other Secret Service members to assert their own claims regarding unpaid overtime.

“We believe that under the rules, class action status is the way to go because all of these agents are affected by the same status, the same salary regulations, the same working conditions, the same employment conditions. So they are numerous and common when it comes to problems,” Wieczorek said.

If the court grants the motion for class certification and the case goes to trial, Wieczorek said it would mark the beginning of the end of this long legal battle.

“If the court rules appropriately and positively on the issue of class certification, we will at least see the light at the end of the tunnel, in terms of concluding the case for the class members,” he said . “The financial analysis is complex and broad, but it’s not legally complex, so it’s a matter of crunching the numbers and figuring out who was affected and how much.”

The latest development in this trial comes at a time when the Secret Service is under intense scrutiny.

It is the permanent director resigned in July, following the first of two assassination attempts on President-elect Donald Trump during the presidential campaign.

A project commissioned by the White House a report released last month found evidence of a culture of “doing more with less” within the Secret Service that may have led to burnout among agents and contributed to the agency’s security failures that led to a July 13 assassination attempt during ‘a Trump campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Wieczorek said the long-running conflict over overtime is also linked to workplace morale.

“It doesn’t help morale if an employer doesn’t pay their employees the money they’re owed for the work they do,” he said. “In any work environment, if you’re not getting paid for the work you do, you’re not going to be very motivated, or your morale isn’t going to be as (high) as it could be.”

The trial focuses on Secret Service agents charged with protecting the details of politicians, dignitaries and elected officials.

The lawsuit, first filed in 2015, originally challenged an Office of Personnel Management policy that required Secret Service agents to perform two consecutive hours of unscheduled overtime duty to receive overtime pay.

But in Horvath v. United Statesanother case in which a Secret Service agent claimed he was not paid the amount of overtime he was owed, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit struck down this OPM policy in 2018 .

The Secret Service updated its pay policies to comply with the appeals court ruling.

But six years after this decision, the plaintiffs Naltner v. United States say the agency still hasn’t paid more than 1,800 officers it says worked split overtime shifts in recent years.

Wieczorek said a class-action lawsuit, if granted, would cover even more current and former Secret Service personnel than that.

“It’s in the thousands, I’m sure,” Wieczorek said. One of the plaintiffs, he added, estimates the agency owes him between $25,000 and $30,000 in unpaid overtime.

In addition to their standard base pay and overtime pay, Secret Service Special Agents are typically eligible for a Law Enforcement Availability Pay Increase (LEAP) – a 25% pay increase added on top of their base salary each pay period, provided they are on average. two additional hours of work per day over the course of a year.

“In other words, LEAP pays special agents for unscheduled overtime (that’s to saybeing asked to start a shift early or stay late) which is an integral part of the special agent role,” court documents state.

For example, a Secret Service special agent working 12 hours with no unscheduled overtime would receive eight hours of his base salary, plus two hours of LEAP pay and two hours of hourly pay at the overtime rate of 1.5 times his salary. base. rate of pay.

Special agents who perform protective duties receive weekly schedules outlining their missions, including scheduled overtime.

Not counting overtime, the Secret Service typically schedules agents for eight-hour, 10-hour and 12-hour shifts. All times beyond eight are considered “scheduled in advance.”

However, the Secret Service may change an agent’s schedule after the work week begins if operational needs require more overtime than anticipated. Any additional overtime hours added to these “red pen schedules” are considered unscheduled overtime hours.

Secret Service agents face caps on their total compensation for each pay period and calendar year.

Including overtime and bonuses, their overall salary cannot exceed the higher of these two categories: the base salary of employees at the GS-15 level (including local salary), level V of the executive scale, which is currently $180,000.

Special agents can still be assigned overtime, even if they have received their salary cap for a given pay period or year.

In 2016, Congress passed the Protective Services Overtime Pay Act to increase these salary caps. The legislators passed another bill in January of this year, this will extend these salary caps until 2028.

In 2017, more than 1,000 secret service agents charged with protecting Trump and his family have reached their salary cap for the year.

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