Earlier this week a lawsuit was filed against Dignity Health that claims nearly 1,200 nurses in the Sacramento area “worked as many as 50 minutes per 12-hour shift of unpaid overtime, three times a week, and that Dignity’s restrictive timekeeping software was part of the reason those hours couldn’t be logged properly.” Specifically, the class action suit alleges the nurses were paid for “exactly 12 hours of work per shift at hospitals in the greater Sacramento area, regardless of when they actually clocked in or out,” according to attorney Bryan Lazarski.The lawsuit was filed in Sacramento County Superior Court earlier this week by Lazarski and Gregory Wong, two employment attorneys in the Los Angeles area. It was filed on behalf of two former nurses and one current nurse employed by Dignity Health. The defendants named in the lawsuit under Dignity Health include the seven following hospitals: Mercy General in Sacramento, Woodland Memorial, Mercy San Juan in Carmichael, Mercy Folsom,  Methodist of Sacramento, Sierra Nevada Memorial in Grass Valley, and Mercy Redding.But why are so many nurses staying longer than their scheduled 12-hour shifts? Well, according to the lawsuit, Dignity Health requires “registered and licensed practical nurses to stay before and after their shifts begin and end for preparatory purposes.” In most cases, this involves spending “20 to 30 minutes of prep before work, with another 10 to 20 minutes of duties afterward” that may include completing paperwork, planning patient care, reviewing charts, and “communicating information with the preceding and following shifts’ nurses.”

Nurse Graphic; image courtesy of chrystalizabeth via Pixabay, www.pixabay.com

The suit states:“These practices are uniform across all Affected Units at the Sacramento Hospitals, occur on a routine and daily basis, and are within the employer’s knowledge such that Defendants knew or should have known the RNs and LVNs were being suffered or permitted to work off the clock.”The suit goes on to state:“Time and Attendance Software, known as TEAM, used does not allow nurses to clock in until seven minutes before their assigned start time...Although the purported ‘grace period’ would theoretically also allow a nurse to clock in as late as 7:07 and receive credit for clocking in at 7:00, this does not occur outside of highly unusual circumstances, due to the required prep work.”As a result of their treatment and unfair pay, the plaintiffs are seeking damages which, according to the lawsuit, “should be calculable because records and/or metadata within the TEAM software should be able to show the actual clock in/out times that employees should have been paid for.” In total, the suit is seeking “a total of the greater of actual damages or $50 for the initial pay period in which a violation occurred, plus $100 for each subsequent violation, up to a maximum of $4,000 in damages per individual.”Because an estimated 1,200 nurses were affected by the restrictive timekeeping software, it's estimated that total damages may reach $4.8 million. In addition, the suit is also seeking damages to cover legal fees.In response to the allegations, Dignity Health released the following statement:“We are reviewing the complaint, and as a matter of practice, we do not comment on pending litigation. At Dignity Health, patient care and safety are our highest priorities. We value our nurses and staff and their daily contributions to our patients and to our mission. We are committed to providing our employees with the work environment, tools, and resources they need to provide excellent care.”

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Timekeeping software won’t let Dignity Health nurses log any overtime, lawsuit saysDignity Health denied nurses overtime pay, lawsuit alleges