Nurses Filed Unpaid Wages Lawsuit Against U.S. Nursing Corp

Denver, COTwo nurses last month filed a proposed class action against U.S. Nursing Corp, claiming they were underpaid while filling in for workers on strike at Kaiser Permanente South Bay Medical Center last October. And it’s not the first class action facing U.S. Nursing.

Plaintiffs Rayshawnda Gilmore and Taneisha McClymont filed their complaint in Colorado federal court against their Colorado-based employer. Both nurses claimed that, during the five days they filled in at the Los Angeles hospital, their wages were miscalculated and delayed. According to the complaint, U.S. Nursing's QR code was used to track their time and their agreed-upon rates was $68 per hour and $102 for overtime. Gilmore worked at least 76 hours from orientation, training, onboarding and three strike shifts, including over 26 hours in one shift, and McClymont worked a little over 57 hours.

They claim that:

• The hospital's electronic time sheet system miscalculated their hours worked.
• They have "persistently and repeatedly" contacted the payroll department about their unpaid wages, but the hospital "has willfully failed or refused" to resolve the situation.
• Delayed payments were "solely due to administrative incompetence, indifference or inertia."
• There are at least 100 class members and over $5 million owed in damages.

The California labor code states that late payments are illegal. The plaintiffs said that late payments are excusable if there is a natural disaster, but not in this case.

The case is Gilmore et al. v. U.S. Nursing Corp., case number 1:23-cv-03345, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado.

Another Complaint Against U.S. Nurses

Another proposed class action was filed a week before the above by the company's strike nurses, who also accused their employer of violating California labor law when it allegedly failed to pay them for travel stipends. (Over 75,000 workers for Kaiser Permanente, which serves nearly 13 million patients, went on strike for three days last October in California, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Virginia and Washington, D.C., making it the largest health care strike in U.S. history.)

This complaint was filed in California by traveling nurses Heidi Rubel and Olga Malysheva, alleges U.S Nursing failed to properly pay its workers under California labor law. The lawsuit alleges that:

• Defendants have had a practice of failing to include the value of their travel stipends, including meals, incidentals, and lodging, whether paid in cash or in kind, in Plaintiffs and other non-exempt employees regular rates of pay when calculating overtime or double time wages.
• Under California law, the time spent attending these training/orientation courses is compensable because, among other things, they are not voluntary and are directly related to employees’ jobs as they are designed to make employees handle their jobs more effectively as opposed to training them for another job or a new or additional skill.

The case is Rubel v. U.S. Nursing Corp, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, 1:23-cv-01664

Nurses and Wage Theft

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, nurses employed by hospitals, nursing homes, and/or home healthcare agencies are frequently the victims of wage theft, mainly because they are forced to work “off the clock” and incur job-related expenses without reimbursement.

Nurses wage theft occurs when:

• Nurse’s work hours are rounded down
• Failing to reimburse nurses for time and mileage spent traveling to and from assigned work sites
• Failing to reimburse nurses for attendance at lectures, seminars, meetings, and training programs
• Nurses are paid at “pay per visit” rates for non-visit work
• Nurses are forced to work during mandatory meal breaks and rest periods without being paid
• Nurses are not paid for updating patient charts, medical records, and other administrative tasks
• Uniform and clothing expenses are not reimbursed
• Denying pay for time spent laundering, ironing, and maintaining uniforms and work-related clothing

The DOL has put together a fact sheet detailing wage and overtime abuses in the health care industry. Frequent issues and problems include:

• Rounding down the minutes in nurses’ work hours
• Failing to pay nurses for time and mileage expense to and from assigned job sites
• Failing to pay nurses for attendance at lectures, seminars, meetings, and training programs
• Compensating nurses at “pay per visit” rates for non-visit work
• Forcing nurses to work during mandatory meal breaks and rest periods without pay
• Denying pay for time nurses spend updating patient charts, medical records, and other administrative tasks
• Failing to reimburse nurses for uniform and work-related clothing expenses
• Denying pay for time spent laundering, ironing, and maintaining uniforms and work-related clothing

By accident or by stated policy, the above actions violate the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and deny nurses the compensation they are entitled to. If you are a nurse you may have be owed thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars.