Firefighters Union Suing City For Overtime
In Which: Former Navigation Center site is closer to being sold, City faces down multiple Worker's Compensation appeals, and Firefighters sue Hayward for lost overtime pay.
City Offloading Former Nav Center Site
The City of Hayward is in negotiations to offload the former site of the Hayward Navigation Center. According to a January 21, 2025 Staff Report, the Hayward Navigation Center was composed of three dormitory-style, short-term housing units for those in the Alameda County Coordinated Entry System. At the time of that writing, it had served over 600 individuals and successfully placed 330 individuals into permanent housing. The Staff report says that the portables—very nearly struck by debris from the Calpine Energy Plant explosion in 2021—had reached the end of their useful life.
The site, on Depot Road and Whitesell Street, was declared “Surplus” since the City intends to relocate the Navigation Center to the new REGIS Village site. Both the Hayward Navigation Center and REGIS Village are operated by Bay Area Community Services (BACS). The Navigation Center portion of the project is not scheduled to be online until early 2026—hopefully February.
It is unclear if the Hayward Navigation Center is still operating on Whitesell and Depot while the property is under negotiations to be sold. The Closed Session Agenda item says, “Under Negotiation: Price and terms.” There is no publicly available information about who is considering purchasing the land at this time.
Labor Negotiations Continue
Labor negotiations with all bargaining groups continue behind closed doors in an effort to address the over $6,000,000 in labor costs that need to be cut to address this year’s budget deficit. This will also be the first negotiation involving new City Manager Jennifer Ott, who began her first day as Hayward’s new City Manager on Monday December 8th. It’s likely that the City wishes to have the new Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) finalized by the end of the December.
Collin Thormoto
Firefighters Sue City For Overtime
Over 30 firefighters, represented by IAFF 1909, are suing the City of Hayward for miscalculating their overtime pay since at least 2021. The lawsuit centers around an “illegal compensation computation method which undercounts [their] regular rate of pay.” This also resulted in undercounting their Overtime compensation—essentially arguing that they worked overtime hours without getting paid appropriately for it.
The primary concern—which is a little complicated—is how firefighter hours were calculated. They say that Hayward calculated their overtime using an “hourly” method, even though they’re salaried employees. The specifics are really complicated, but the lawsuit lays out an example of what happened.
If a firefighter’s base salary is $50/hour—it is actually between $48 and $67/hr—and they receive an education incentive of 5%, their rate of pay should be $52.50/hr (50+2.50). Their overtime rate should then be $78.75 (52.50 x 1.5)—the overtime rate would increase the incentive to $3.75/hr.
But they allege that the City of Hayward used bad math and for some reason the incentive only increased the overtime rate by $1.25/hr (2.50 x .5). If that’s true, then the City was underpaying firefighters working overtime who had the 5% education incentive by $2.50 for every overtime hour worked.
There’s also a secondary issue where cash-in-lieu of health care wasn’t included in their rate, either. For example, if one of the firefighters already had healthcare, they can take a cash payment instead. According to their lawsuit, the City should have included that cash payment in their overtime rate, which would take that same amount they were getting instead of healthcare and multiplying that by 1.5.
According to the IAFF MOU (6.03), in 2018 the City of Hayward paid CalPERS $133/month for medical insurance. If a firefighter elected to take cash-in-lieu of medical benefits, then according to this lawsuit they would be entitled to an additional $66 if they worked a full month’s worth of overtime (133 x 1.5 = 199.5).
Maybe that doesn’t sound like much, but this lawsuit stretches back to December of 2021. During that time period, the MIHU portion of the HEART program was funded almost entirely with firefighter overtime. The MIHU program was active for over two years with Monday-Friday hours of 8am-12pm. Depending on how many firefighters staffed the MIHU—likely at least two—this relatively small amount could be quite large in aggregate.
The firefighters are seeking 3 years of back pay for their overtime—with interest, liquidated damages—an extra and unspecified amount of money, the cost of the suit, and attorney fees.
Collin Thormoto
Firefighter overtime compensation—and the way the City failed to budget for it—was one of the largest drivers of the City’s current budget deficit. According to a 10-year budget-to-actuals document, the Fire Department Overtime fund was around $8,000,000 over budget in 2024.
Further Worker’s Compensation Cases Plague City
At least two other Worker’s Compensation appeals are being discussed tonight. One of the cases doesn’t appear to have any publicly available information at this time, but the other—brought by Officer Ronald Womack—involves multiple injuries sustained as far back as 2018. These include injured shoulders (2018 claim), heart (2022 claim), back, legs, and knee (2023 claim).
It is unclear what the case is appealing, though it’s likely that the appeal is to receive a more generous compensation package. The date for next hearing is February 9th. Ronald Womack also appears to be a Director of the Hayward Police Officer’s Association, the union representing sworn officers of the Hayward Police Department.
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