PERRY CO., Ind. (WEHT) — Over a hundred nurses in Tell City will be collecting the money the government says they deserve after officials ordered Perry County Memorial Hospital to pay the nurses over $60,000 in back wages.
The US Department of Labor says the hospital violated the Fair Labor Standards Act regulations after the hospital allegedly:
- Deducted 30-minute meal breaks after six hours worked, without verifying if employees used meal breaks.
- Failed to include incentive pay – such as shift, longevity and referral bonus – when calculating an employees’ hourly rate of pay for overtime purposes.
- Incorrectly recorded hours worked within a pay period, which denied some employees overtime for hours over 40 in a workweek.
“While automated time clocks programmed to make common payroll deductions like meal breaks can be a timesaver for managers, they can cause errors in employees’ timekeeping, especially in an industry like healthcare where urgent matters often force nurses and other workers to work through breaks,” explained Acting Wage and Hour Division District Director Fernando Hernandez.
“Employers who use such automated devices must verify that employees used their meal breaks and make sure pay rates and hours are accurate and that they paid employees their full wages,” he adds.
$60,254 in overtime back wages was recovered for 107 nurses working at the Perry County Memorial Hospital. We have reached out to the hospital, but no one was able to comment Sunday night.
