Class Action Claims Med-Call Owes Nurses Unpaid Wages for Time Spent Traveling to Vaccination Sites

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A proposed class and collective action alleges Med-Call Healthcare, Inc. and its chief operating officer have unlawfully refused to pay nurses for time spent traveling to COVID-19 vaccination sites.

The 14-page case says that although Med-Call, a healthcare staffing company, represented to nurses that their terms of employment included pay for travel time, the company changed its tune around January 2021 and refused to pay nurses for time spent driving to their assigned vaccination sites.

The lawsuit alleges Med-Call has violated the federal Fair Labor Standards Act by failing to pay nurses all earned wages, including overtime.

The plaintiff, a Florida resident, says she began working on the defendants’ COVID-19 vaccination project in January 2021 and was responsible for administering the vaccine at several sites in Florida until her employment ended in April. Per the case, the plaintiff was required to report to the vaccination site at 6:00 a.m. and work until at least 6:00 p.m. five days per week, averaging about 20 hours of weekly overtime. The lawsuit adds, however, that the plaintiff was on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and was therefore committed to Med-Call at all times.

The plaintiff says she was initially assigned to a vaccination site in Venice and informed that her travel time was compensable. Soon thereafter, the suit relays, the defendant “changed course” and retroactively revoked its policy to compensate nurses for time spent traveling from their homes to their assigned vaccination sites and back. Per the complaint, Med-Call stated in a January 2021 internal email that “State of Florida representatives recently informed us that all nurses’ shifts among all regions begin the moment they arrive to their command center and ends [sic] when they leave the command center at the end of day.”

The case claims the plaintiff was then assigned to a vaccination site in Fort Lauderdale, four or five hours away from where she lived.

The lawsuit alleges that Med-Call could have “easily and accurately” recorded the time nurses spent traveling to their assignments yet applied a company-wide policy of recording only the time workers spent at the actual vaccination sites.

The suit looks to represent all current and former nurses who worked for Med-Call Healthcare, Inc. at any time in the last three years in the United States at designated vaccination locations and who were not paid overtime for every hour worked in excess of 40 in a given week.

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