Overtime Violations and New York's Health Care Industry
Late last year, our firm received a telephone call from an administrator employed by a hospital in New York State. The call was particularly memorable because the caller was frantically racing to finish the case screening - she had to return to her desk within 10 minutes or her absence would be noticed and dispparoved of by her supervisors. She told me that she was expected to work around the clock, including through her lunch and rest breaks, without any overtime pay. I asked her how many others were not receiving overtime and she seemed puzzled; nobody was getting overtime, she told me. We did a quick calculation and determined that over 100 employees were owed about $20,000 each. She was terrified of retaliation from her employer, and never called back after our intial call.
I've thought of this caller often - she was truly terrified of her employer - and wondered why we don't get more calls from health care workers. Apparently, it is not for a lack of wage and hour violations. The New York State Department of Labor recently launched a wage and hour enforcement intiative aimed at the health care industry, noting that nearly 65% of health care employers in New York who had been investigated in the last five years were not in compliance with federal wage and hour laws. If this is the case, the restaurant industry may have stiff competition as the most FLSA noncompliant industry.
