WHEELING – Ohio County employees who filed three lawsuits alleging improper wage and payment issues have amended their complaints to add retaliatory claims against the Ohio County Commission.
The original complaints, all filed December 5, allege three different payment issues. The Ohio County Commission is named as the defendant in all three lawsuits. On December 14, the amended complaints were filed after the commission reduced the plaintiffs’ pay and benefits following the filing of the original lawsuits.
The amended complaint calls that action “an unprecedented move.”
“Sheriff’s deputies are not permitted to strike or collectively bargain,” attorney Teresa Toriseva, who is representing the plaintiffs, told The West Virginia Record. “When attempts to resolve wage disputes fail by talking, the only way they can be heard is through a lawsuit.
“Here, the deputies and civilian employees who support them have tried extensively to resolve all issues first without lawyers, and even then without a lawsuit. Those attempts have failed and the issues have remained unresolved for many months.
“Now, unfortunately, the deputies are forced to take further action for illegal retaliation, as alleged in the amended lawsuits, for the ongoing actions of the county commission. Just three days after the lawsuits were originally filed, a letter was sent to Sheriff (Thomas) Howard ordering substantial wage and benefits reductions for his deputies.
“This hostile situation creates a direct threat to public safety by creating conditions that harm recruitment and retention. The Ohio County Sheriff’s office is already understaffed and unable to meet its own minimum staffing standards on a regular basis.”
In one, 29 sheriff’s deputies say they have been denied at least one week’s pay by the county switching the payroll to being paid ahead by two days to being paid entirely in arrears. In the second, 31 employees claim they should have been paid the same as other county employees during the COVID-19 pandemic who received full pay but worked half of the hours. In the third, 16 plaintiffs allege they were forced to use their own earned paid sick time to comply with the county COVID policy of quarantining or otherwise not coming into work when the reason they couldn’t come into work was caused by a work event.
In the first complaint, the deputies say that by changing how the Ohio County Commission pays the plaintiffs to one week in arrears, it conflicts with the county handbook and has caused issues related to pay and benefits of county employees.
“The defendant undertook a plan to pay the plaintiffs different amounts in their paychecks until the change in employee pay could be completed,” the complaint states. “This has caused payroll discrepancies and has resulted in the plaintiffs being paid inaccurately or incorrectly.”
As an example, the complaint says one employee paycheck was for one week of pay, but it had two weeks of deductions taken out of it.
“Nothing on the paystub documented or memorialized that the plaintiffs were owed the missing one week of pay,” the complaint states. “Additionally, no clear guidance has been provided as to when the one week of pay owed to the Plaintiffs will be paid. This violates the West Virginia Wage Payment and Collection Act.”
The plaintiffs say one week of pay for each of them remains unpaid, which also violates state code. They also say this change resulted in the amount of their retirement contributions being adversely affected.
“All employees are aware of the amount taken per bi-weekly pay,” the complaint states. “The new manner and method causes the plaintiffs paychecks to contribute a much smaller amount to the retirement plan. This reduction in the amount of fringe benefits such as this also violates the WPCA.”
The deputies seek judgment and compensatory damages, interest, attorney fees, court costs and other relief.
In the second complaint, the plaintiffs note how then-Ohio County Administrator Greg Stewart notified county employees at the start of the COVID pandemic in March 2020 about using rotating shifts to allow employees to keep their distance among everyone and to keep hours worked as equal as possible, but he also said all full-time county employees would be paid their normal pay. Many of them are sheriff’s deputies.
Stewart later reiterated the use of rotating shifts and for supervisors to “please work the staff for half the hours and of course the other half of the staff for the other half of the hours.”
“Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ohio County Sheriff Deputies continued to fulfill their obligations to the county and their community working full-time on the job with no additional compensation, except for a $1,000 ‘hero pay’ one-time bonus at the end of April, 2020,” the complaint states. “Unlike other categories of county employees, the plaintiffs were required to continue to work their regular shifts and work at least the same number of hours during the pandemic and they did prior to the pandemic.
“Otherwise, the safety needs of the county residents would not be met. The plaintiffs, unlike other county employees, did not have their pre-COVID pandemic base pay rate increased as promised by the defendant.”
That, according to the complaint, means the county violated its own wage policies and failed to pay the plaintiffs in accordance with the COVID pay rate policy.
“The defendant changed its pay policy during the COVID pandemic, the complaint states. “It agreed to pay county employees during the COVID pandemic at a rate of double time their pre-COVID base rate.
“The defendant paid other county employees the COVID pay rate but did not pay the plaintiffs the COVID pay rate.”
The plaintiffs have requested the missing wages, but the county has refused to pay. They also seek judgement, compensatory damages, interest, attorney fees, court costs and other relief.
In the third complaint, the employees who became sick with COVID through the course of their work say they were required to work to meet the public needs of the county. Many of them are sheriff’s deputies.
“When the plaintiffs were sick from COVID due to work related activities, the deputies were forced to quarantine from work and they were forced by their employer, the defendant County Commission, to use their earned personal sick leave for the time missed from work,” the complaint states. “The county further implemented a policy requiring employees to quarantine when they traveled outside a one-hundred-mile radius from Wheeling, West Virginia.”
When the plaintiffs quarantined, they say they were required to use their earned personal sick leave. But the county Employee Handbook states, “Sick leave is provided only for, and is intended to be used for, short term absences from scheduled work due to personal illness or injury which is not a result of or related to work activities.”
They say the county failed to pay wages as required by state code and failed to apply its own policy regarding the use of sick leave.
“The plaintiffs were required to use their personal earned sick leave for COVID sickness from work related activities in direct violation of Section 18 of the Ohio County Employee Handbook,” the complaint states. “The plaintiffs were required to use their personal earned sick leave in order to remain off work following coming into contact with COVID, regardless of whether the plaintiffs were sick, in direct violation of Section 18 of the Ohio County Employee Handbook. … As a result of this requirement, the plaintiffs were denied payment of wages and/or fringe benefits.”
In April, several members of the Ohio County Sheriff’s Office filed grievances with the Ohio County Commission about the matter.
In the amended complaints, the plaintiffs say the commission held its regular meeting the day after the original complaints were filed. Two days later, it sent Sheriff Howard a letter changing the plaintiffs’ pay and benefits.
The letter “stated that it was going to cancel the Highlands extra duty contract, effective December 31, 2022, where the Ohio County Sheriffs received premium pay patrol the area,” the complaint states. “In the same vein, the commission also announced its intention to cancel the Highlands Sports Complex security contract effective December 31, 2022.
“The commission added an additional workload on the Ohio County Sheriff’s Office administrative staff by unilaterally discontinuing certain past practices where the commission’s office would administer contracts and collect payment under the contracts. That workload now falls on the Ohio County Sheriff’s Office’s staff.
“Moreover, the commission is changing the number of hours of vacation time and Holiday Pay time that the plaintiffs can bank per year.”
It says the commission eliminated the accrual of compensatory time for hourly employees, eliminated overtime irrespective of hours worked for special events that deputies were required to work and patrol, discontinued the practice of paying deputies one hour for physical training for each day they work and announced that it would review and change its policies surrounding take home vehicles sometime in the future.
“The Commission took these actions because the plaintiffs filed suit against it for other improper pay policies, including quarantine sick leave, COVID pay rate and for failing to pay them when changing the county’s pay practices,” the amended complaint states. “Regardless of whether the actions of the commission could have been lawfully implemented, the commission acted with ill will and intended to retaliate against and discipline the plaintiffs for daring to stand up for themselves.”
The amended complaint says the actions threaten public safety.
“The Ohio County Sheriff’s Office will, inevitably, struggle to recruit new employees, including qualified deputies, and will struggle to retain the qualified deputies and support staff it now has because of the actions taken by the commission,” it states. “The plaintiffs, as civil service members, do not have the right to collectively bargain or strike to obtain better working conditions.
“The plaintiffs only means of challenging the defendant’s conduct is through the civil court system and through the civil service commission. The plaintiffs have engaged in lawfully protected conduct, but their employer, the defendant, has wrongfully retaliated against them for their decision to petition to government for a redress of grievances.”
In addition, the sheriff’s deputies have filed a demand for a public hearing with the Ohio County Civil Service Commission about the retaliatory actions of the county commission.
“Never before in the known history of Ohio County has any individual or county commission reduced the pay of an entire department of employees in retaliation for those employees filing lawsuits to protect their pay and benefits,” the request for a public hearing states. “The recruitment of new deputies and retention of existing ones are the most important part of establishing a law enforcement department. It is so important, there are state laws in place establishing safeguards for the hiring process, the firing process, the reduction in rank and the reduction in pay for all deputies who work for a county.
“Not only do those laws, called civil service, protect the deputies, but more importantly those rules prevent any county commission from endangering the public by taking adverse employment action against them without written reasons followed by a showing of showing of good cause at a public hearing.”
These plaintiffs also have requested the missing wages, but the county has refused to pay. They also seek judgement, compensatory damages, interest, attorney fees, court costs and other relief.
Ohio Circuit Court case numbers 22-C-210 (weekly pay), 22-C-211 (COVID pay) and 22-C-212 (sick leave)