Class Action: Kaiser Foundation Hospitals Fails to Pay Advice Nurses for Pre-, Post-Shift Work

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Kaiser Foundation Hospitals is facing a proposed class and collective action that alleges it unlawfully requires its call center nurses to perform pre- and post-shift work without compensation. According to the case, the defendant hires nurses as Telemedicine Specialists and Advice Nurses to work remotely or at its call centers to respond to phone calls from patients. Nurses are paid hourly and receive overtime wages for hours worked beyond 40 each week, the suit says. However, the defendant allegedly doesn’t pay the employees for time they spend each morning booting up their computers, logging into applications and programs, and clocking into the defendant’s timekeeping system. Similarly, the time the employees spend working during meal periods or after logging out of the timekeeping system each day also goes unpaid, the case alleges.

The suit then describes several other activities for which employees allegedly receive no wages, such as:

• time spent working while experiencing connectivity issues;
• time employees spend reviewing “hours and punches” on the timekeeping system;
• time remote workers spend traveling to the defendant’s brick-and-mortar locations during the workday to resolve technical issues or pick up equipment; and
• time spent traveling to mandatory meetings and training sessions.

The plaintiff claims her supposedly unpaid hours add up to “no less than” 90 minutes per week, most of which qualify as overtime.

On top of the supposed wage violations, the lawsuit also claims the defendant fails to reimburse employees for “necessary business expenditures incurred in the execution of their duties.”