August 2020 - Parks & Recreation - 32

L AW R EV I EW

piece of paper each time they accrued comp time and place the paper in a binder on the assistant director's desk. When they wanted to
use accumulated comp time hours,
the exempt employees would retrieve their comp time paper from
the binder and submit it to their
supervisor. The supervisor would
then approve the exempt employees' use of comp time to take off a
day or some part of it.

The City payroll department
had to approve an employee's
timecard before a comp-timeconsuming employee in the
parks and recreation department
could be paid.
This process in the parks and recreation department for approving
comp time for exempt employees
was not quite enough to make this
off-the-books operation work. The
City payroll department had to approve an employee's timecard before a comp-time-consuming employee in the parks and recreation
department could be paid. In the
case of exempt employees, the City
payroll department would not have
approved payment for prohibited
comp time as a substitute for hours
worked on a day that the exempt
employee actually took off.
With the approval of their managers, Pearson and the other exempt employees in the parks and
recreation department, therefore,
submitted timecards to the payroll
department showing that they were
working a full day, even when they
were not working all or even part
of that day, but were instead using
comp time to be off. Under that in30

Parks & Recreation

formal, de facto system, the human
resources and payroll departments
had no record of any exempt employees, including Pearson, ever
accruing and using comp time. It
was under that informal system,
Pearson, like other exempt employees in the parks and recreation
department, kept track of and used
her comp time. Throughout her
employment in the department,
Pearson's managers continued to
approve use of her accrued comp
time for payment.
In 2005, Pearson complained
that male managers were receiving extra pay for taking on extra
work, but she was not. That year,
she filed an EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission)
sex discrimination charge against
her manager and the City. In her
sex discrimination claim, Pearson
alleged that she was treated worse
and paid less than the other managers - all of whom were men. Specifically, Pearson claimed all of the
male managers had offices, while
she had none. Moreover, Pearson
claimed that all of the male managers could wear whatever they wanted, while she had to wear a uniform. The EEOC issued a " right to
sue " letter, but Pearson decided not
to sue at that time.
In 2008, Pearson contracted a serious infection that resulted in her
undergoing 29 surgeries between
2008 and 2011. After each one of
those surgeries, Pearson was out of
work for at least a week, sometimes
longer. In July 2011, Pearson had a
severe flare up and was out of work
until December 2011. During that
time, she was placed on Family
Medical Leave Act leave. Pearson
was paid through mid-August (using her accrued vacation and sick

| AU G U S T 2 02 0 | PA R K S A N D R E C R E AT I O N .O R G

leave), but after that her leave was
unpaid.
Pearson called a parks and recreation administrative assistant who
handled timecards for the department and asked to use some of her
comp time to extend the paid portion of her leave. Pearson was told
parks and recreation was " going to
have to hold her time of comp until she returned. " Instead, Pearson
was granted catastrophic leave, a
program under which employees
can donate time off to an employee in need of it. Catastrophic leave
is available only to employees who
have exhausted all other forms of
paid leave, including comp time.
Many of the employees under
Pearson's supervision donated
their time off to her.
In December 2011, the City put
out a new handbook explicitly
providing that exempt employees
could not accrue or use comp time.
On December 8, 2011, Pearson
signed a form acknowledging that
she had received and had the opportunity to read the entire handbook.
Shortly after Pearson returned
to work in December 2011, she experienced problems with her new
manager, and she found some of
the employees under her supervision to be insubordinate. In late
December, Pearson told her manager that she was going to file a
formal complaint against him. The
manager granted Pearson's request
to take some " time off to cool
down. " Pearson was out of work
for four days, but she had exhausted most of her available time off as
a result of her return to work from
her extended leave of absence. Her
only remaining time off was comp
time. Pearson requested permission

August 2020 - Parks & Recreation

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