The New York Times has published an article about investigations of health care facilities pay practices. It rings true for many of us: Do we really get paid for actual time we work?
In St. Louis, the Labor Department has recovered more than $1.7 million in back wages for 4,000 employees of hospitals and clinics operated by SSM Health Care, a Roman Catholic system.
In Boston, the Partners HealthCare System agreed to pay 700 employees more than $2.7 million in overtime back wages to resolve a lawsuit by the department alleging violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act.
And under the proposed settlement of a class-action lawsuit in California, Kaiser Permanente would pay $7.25 million to hundreds of registered nurse coordinators, case managers and other medical workers. The employees said they had been denied overtime pay because they were improperly classified as exempt.
This is when they classify nurses as supervisors. They are, but they usually do not meet the federal standards for being exempt.
Nursing assistants, licensed practical nurses, janitors and cooks “are particularly vulnerable to wage violations,” Mr. Stripling said.
In many cases, employees say they were not paid for work performed during meal breaks.
“Most nurses put the patient first,” said Charles D. Boal, a registered nurse who worked in the critical care unit of The Western Pennsylvania Hospital in Monroeville, near Pittsburgh.
“We often gave up lunch breaks to see that a patient was taken care of properly,” he said. “If you brought your lunch from home or got food in the cafeteria and took it to the nursing unit, you would be interrupted by phone calls, by physicians and family members who wanted to talk to you. We really did not have an uninterrupted meal break.”
How many of us have given up a break, or shortened one, because of patient/resident care demands? I know I have. Multiple times. We need to MAKE sure we are being paid for those minutes given off our breaks. Don’t let the facility management con you into believing they don’t HAVE to pay you because a supervisor/other did not ASK you to give up break times.
