DENHAM SPRINGS, LA (AP) — The Denham Springs City Council has closed a loophole in the city's employee pay code expected to save tens of thousands of dollars per year.
Under the previous code, employees were able to include vacation time in the calculation to determine when they could begin receiving overtime pay. City employees — with the exception of police officers, whose overtime starts after 84 hours per 14-day period, and firefighters, whose overtime starts after 204 hours per 27-day period — must accumulate 40 hours per week before earning time-and-a-half-pay. Now, the city employees will not be allowed to count vacation time to qualify for overtime pay.
Mayor Jimmy Durbin tells The Advocate’s Steve Hardy allowing employees to accumulate hours through vacation time cost the city an additional $22,000 in the last seven months.
