In working for a casino, just like playing against a casino, the odds always favor the house. Dozens of employees of Twin River Casino employees are calling foul on how the house calculates overtime.
About 80 employees of Bally’s Twin River Casino in Rhode Island are suing the parent company in a class action lawsuit. They claim overtime payments were unlawfully miscalculated.
The tipped workers, who include bartenders, dealers and servers, accused Bally’s of violating the Fair Labor Standards Act by undercounting their hours to avoid paying overtime.
The method Bally’s used, claims the lawsuit, was a time-clock that rounds times to the nearest 15 minutes. At the same time workers are not allowed to punch in more than seven minutes before their shift starts.
According to attorney Chip Muller, “This means they would never be able to round down … in the employee’s favor,” Muller explained. “In other words, the rounding always was in favor of the house.”
Muller added, “There are two options, right? The first is that they were ignorant of the law and were breaking the law unknowingly. The other is that they knew full well what they were doing and chose to break the law anyway.” The workers’ attorney concluded, “Either way, it doesn’t matter for our purposes because the law requires employers to follow it whether they like it or not.”
Twin River doesn’t comment on legal matters, so it issued no comment to the lawsuit.
Meanwhile, Bally’s Tiverton Casino and Hotel has requested the town to lower the casino property tax valuation. The Rhode Island-based casino claims the Covid pandemic’s effects caused its property value to plunge.
The last time the city assessed the casino’s property it was at $60,476,900, a 6.5 percent depreciation from its previous assessment. That was December 31, 2020, during the worst of the pandemic.
The casino has appealed the Tax Assessor’s calculations for November 2021. The appeal argues that a fair assessment would include a 61 percent obsolescence factor. It adds that it “seeks to work with the Tax Assessor’s Office to determine an appropriate obsolescence factor.”
The town’s tax assessor denied the original appeal in January, which was then appealed to the Tiverton Tax Board of Review. It is expected hand down a decision within a few weeks.
