Migliaccio & Rathod LLP is investigating whether contract security officers assigned to federal buildings in Washington, D.C. were denied pay for required pre-shift, post-shift, meal-period, standby, and overtime work.
What is the general issue?
Many federal buildings are protected by officers employed by private security companies rather than directly by the federal government. A federal agency may contract with a large security company, which may then use subsidiaries, staffing companies, or other subcontractors.
Officers may know the federal building, post number, uniform, and company issuing their paycheck without knowing the principal contractor.
A recurring problem can arise when payroll covers only the officer’s scheduled post time. The officer’s real workday may include security screening, roll call, equipment issuance, post inspections, travel to a post, waiting for relief, incident reports, equipment return, training, and mandatory holdovers.
The existence of a federal security contract does not itself demonstrate a wage violation. This investigation seeks information from workers about actual timekeeping, scheduling, meal-period, and payroll practices.
Security officers may have experienced:
- Unpaid roll call or briefings.
- Having to arrive early to be ready at the official shift start.
- Unpaid firearms, radios, keys, badges, or equipment procedures.
- Unpaid walking or transportation from a reporting point to a post.
- Automatic meal deductions while remaining at a post.
- Interrupted meal periods that remained deducted.
- Waiting after a shift for a relief officer.
- Unpaid report writing or equipment return.
- Mandatory overtime paid at straight time.
- Hours split among buildings, contracts, or payroll companies.
- Unpaid training, firearms qualification, or recertification.
- Retaliation after reporting missing wages.
Signs you may be affected
- You worked as an armed or unarmed security officer, access-control officer, patrol officer, dispatcher, or other security employee at a federal building in Washington, D.C.
- You worked for a private security contractor rather than directly for the federal government.
- You reported early for roll call, equipment issuance, screening, post assignments, or other required duties 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 post or could not leave your work area.
- You completed reports, waited for relief, returned equipment, attended mandatory training, or worked holdover shifts without compensation.
Information that may help
Workers should preserve:
- Paystubs and payroll records.
- Personal time logs and calendars.
- Post schedules and post orders.
- Text messages with supervisors.
- Photographs of uniforms, badges, posts, and work locations.
- Training and firearms-qualification records.
- Names of relief officers and coworkers.
- Records showing meal deductions.
- Incident reports or shift logs showing work outside scheduled hours.
- Building-access, weapons-issue, equipment, vehicle, or sign-in records.
The federal agency generally is not the worker’s direct employer, but the security company issuing the paycheck and companies higher in the contracting chain may be responsible under applicable wage laws.
If you performed armed or unarmed security, access-control, screening, patrol, dispatch, control-room, badging, visitor-processing, vehicle-inspection, package-inspection, or other protective-services work at a federal building in Washington, D.C. and believe you were not paid for all required time, please contact Migliaccio & Rathod LLP through the form below, by email at [email protected], or by telephone at (202) 470-3520.