Allegheny General Hospital Workers Paid Improperly Due to Kronos Data Breach, Class Action Claims

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A proposed class action lawsuit claims Allegheny General Hospital underpaid certain employees after a payroll vendor was compromised in a late-2021 data breach.

The 14-page case says that because the breach affected Kronos Incorporated’s timekeeping software, defendants West Penn Allegheny Health System, Inc. and Allegheny Health Network estimated workers’ hours between December 19, 2021 and January 2, 2022 based on a previous pay period instead of using their manually tracked work time. Thus, some workers who put in more hours during the holiday period may have been underpaid, the lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit explains that defendants UKG, Inc. and Kronos Incorporated provide human resources services to Allegheny General Hospital (AGH) and Allegheny Health Network (AHN), who offer health care services in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area. Per the suit, Kronos experienced a ransomware attack sometime before December 19 that caused its software to “fail[] in its entirety.” As a result, AGH and AHN estimated employees’ pay for the period between December 19 and January 2 based on a previous pay period between November 7 and November 21, 2021, the lawsuit alleges.

The suit claims workers were paid the same amount as they received during the November pay period plus an additional eight hours of pay, presumably to discourage workers from complaining about incorrect wages.

The complaint alleges, however, that some workers may have worked fewer hours during the November pay period and more hours during the December to January pay period in order to earn holiday pay. The plaintiff, for instance, who works as a food service associate in the defendants’ cafeteria, says he was injured during the November pay period and had to use paid time off to seek medical treatment, which thus lowered his earnings for that period. Moreover, the plaintiff claims to have earned extra overtime wages during the December to January pay period, plus holiday pay, that he never received due to the defendants’ failure to properly record his time, the complaint attests.

Though the plaintiff complained to his supervisors about the apparent pay discrepancy, “nothing was done,” the lawsuit says.

The case notes that employees had to manually track their hours even before the ransomware incident and thus have a record of the hours they worked. Nevertheless, AGH and AHN failed to utilize workers’ manually tracked hours and instead improperly estimated their pay, the suit says.

The plaintiff looks to represent anyone who worked as hourly staff for AGH and AHN and was not paid owed overtime or holiday pay, and anyone in Pennsylvania who was not paid their proper wages, due to the Kronos software failure.

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