Compensentory Time

3119554

We are a municipality. Police Officers' are allowed to compile "Comp time" in liu of over time. My question is: are we obligated to pay out a portion of it at their request? I believe we are, but I am not able to find anything in RI Law. It may have been a court decision as I remember. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. Chuck

Hunter1

Can't help with RI law, but, in general, no, you don't have to comply with a request to pay out comp time (except at termination). Here's the catch: In order to have a comp time system for overtime, you need the employee(s)' agreement to a comp time system BEFORE the overtime is worked. This can either be by policy which the employee is notified of, by individual agreement, or by labor agreement. When you made up the policy or agreement, you should have implemented rules about how the comp time can be used, for instance, we allow for our officers, by labor agreement, to accumulate a max of 80 hours at any given time, any time over that is paid in cash. Also, we allow them to make a request once a year in July to be paid for up to the eighty hours. And, of course, we allow them to use it within a reasonable period of their request 'as long as it doesn't unduly disrupt' our business needs. That's the current status of case law as I understand it.