Phlebotomists Claim Multicare Health System Robbed Employees of Due Wages

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Multicare Health System is facing a proposed class action that claims the defendant didn’t pay employees for all their hours worked. According to the complaint, the plaintiffs work or worked for the company as phlebotomists—employees tasked with taking blood and collecting samples for medical labs—while putting in 10-hour shifts from which a 30-minute meal period is/was automatically deducted. The plaintiffs claim that despite being “routinely interrupted” during their breaks, the defendant still subtracted half an hour from their shifts each day to account for meal periods they weren’t always able to take due to the company’s lack of coverage.

Further, the case alleges, the defendant’s timekeeping system automatically rounded employees’ hours in seven-minute increments.

“For example,” the complaint explains, “when a phlebotomists [sic] clocks in at 10:53 a.m. for a shift scheduled at 11:00 a.m., the time keeping system would report that s/he started working at 11:00 a.m., accordingly denying the employee 7 minutes of compensable time.”

The effect, according to the suit, was that employees were frequently robbed of time worked when they clocked in one to seven minutes before their shifts started or clocked out one to seven minutes after their shifts ended. On the other hand, employees were disciplined if they clocked in “even one minute after the start of their shift,” the suit says.

The plaintiffs claim the result of these policies was that phlebotomists were not paid for all hours worked, and should have been paid premium overtime wages for their allegedly uncompensated time.

The lawsuit was originally filed in state court and has since been removed to the District Court for the Western District of Washington.