Ex-Employee Claims Odyssey Healthcare Failed to Provide Proper Sick Time, Overtime Pay

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A proposed class and representative action claims Odyssey Healthcare Operating A, L.P. has failed to pay employees proper wages for sick time and overtime.

According to the lawsuit, the home healthcare provider skimped on workers’ wages by failing to include non-discretionary remuneration, such as “on-call” pay, in employees’ regular rates of pay for the purposes of calculating sick time, overtime, and double-time wages.

Instead, Odyssey Healthcare used only the workers’ base hourly rates to pay sick time and calculate their time-and-a-half overtime rates, the suit says. Double-time wages were paid not at two times employees’ regular rates, or even two times the miscalculated base rates, but at their straight time rates, according to the case.

“Defendants thus routinely fail to timely pay Plaintiff and other non-exempt employees all due sick pay, overtime, and double-time wages, which are neither timely paid during employment nor timely paid upon termination of employment,” the complaint reads.

The plaintiff says she began working as a nurse for Odyssey Healthcare in May 2013 and quit in 2020. According to the suit, the plaintiff regularly worked more than 40 hours per week and eight hours per day and often earned non-discretionary remuneration, including on-call pay. The case claims, however, that the plaintiff was paid at her base hourly rate for sick time, not including the extra wages that should have been considered part of her regular rate.

Likewise, the defendant also failed to include the plaintiff’s non-discretionary pay when calculating her time-and-a-half overtime rate and double-time rate, according to the lawsuit.

The plaintiff further alleges that because of Odyssey Health’s apparent wage miscalculations, she was not provided with itemized, accurate wage statements in accordance with the California Labor Code.

Initially filed in San Diego County Superior Court in October 2020, the lawsuit was removed to California’s Southern District Court on December 7.

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