Covid Hazard Pay Has Ripple Effects in Today’s Overtime Cases

Potential wage-and-hour liability exposure persists for employers that provided additional wages in response to the pandemic, even as Covid-19 hazard pay has mostly dried up.

Workers have filed at least 14 federal collective actions against employers for allegedly failing to pay all overtime owed because they didn’t include virus pay boosts when calculating overtime rates, according to a Bloomberg Law review of cases. Nine of those lawsuits have either settled or are in the process of being settled, court records show.

The lawsuits stem from the Fair Labor Standards Act’s computation of the overtime pay rate, which is equal to ...