Migliaccio & Rathod LLP is investigating whether security officers assigned to the Department of Justice Headquarters and related DOJ facilities in Washington, D.C. were paid for all required work time.
What is the issue?
Federal security officers may be scheduled and paid according to the time they are expected to stand at their assigned posts. Their actual workday, however, may begin earlier and end later.
Before reaching a post, an officer may have to pass through employee screening, attend roll call, receive a post assignment, obtain a firearm or other equipment, inspect a radio, review security alerts, or travel through a large building. After the scheduled shift, the officer may have to wait for a relief officer, return equipment, complete reports, or speak with a supervisor.
Time spent performing these required activities may be compensable. A recurring deduction of even 15 or 30 minutes per shift can result in substantial unpaid wages and overtime.
Public federal-spending records show that the Department of Justice awarded Paragon Systems a large contract for security-guard, physical-security, and badging services. The existence of that contract does not establish a wage violation; this investigation seeks information about how officers assigned to DOJ facilities were actually scheduled and paid.
Security officers may have experienced:
- Unpaid roll-call or briefing time.
- Having to arrive before the time shown on their paychecks.
- Unpaid firearm, radio, key, badge, or equipment issuance.
- Automatic meal deductions while remaining responsible for a post.
- Interrupted meal periods that were still deducted.
- Unpaid time waiting for a replacement officer.
- Mandatory holdovers or double shifts without proper overtime.
- Unpaid incident-report or end-of-shift paperwork.
- Hours split between locations or payroll entities to avoid overtime.
- Overtime calculated using the wrong base rate.
Signs you may be affected
- You worked as an armed or unarmed security officer, lobby officer, patrol officer, dispatcher, or access-control officer at the Department of Justice Headquarters.
- You worked for a private security contractor rather than directly for the federal government.
- You reported early for roll call, weapons issuance, equipment pickup, or post assignments without being paid for all of your time.
- You worked more than 40 hours in a week but did not receive proper overtime pay.
- Your employer automatically deducted meal breaks even though you remained responsible for your assigned security post.
- You remained on duty after your scheduled shift while waiting for relief or completing required reports without compensation.
Workers may know the DOJ building, post number, supervisor, uniform, or company appearing on their paycheck without knowing the principal federal contractor. The contracting chain can generally be identified from procurement, scheduling, and payroll records.
If you performed armed or unarmed security, access-control, screening, patrol, dispatch, control-room, badging, visitor-processing, or other protective-services work at a Department of Justice facility in Washington, D.C. and believe required time was omitted from your paycheck, please contact Migliaccio & Rathod LLP through the form below, by email at [email protected], or by telephone at (202) 470-3520.