ASHEVILLE – A recently filed federal lawsuit claims the HCA-owned Mission Health system illegally withheld the pay of 1,000 or more employees.
The class and collection action filed April 25 by respiratory therapist Sharon McRee said Tennessee-based HCA “deliberately manipulated work start and end records” for her and other hourly workers “to reflect less time worked when (HCA) submitted these employees’ records to payroll, resulting in less time paid than time worked.”
Other “illegal wage and salary theft practices” include not paying overtime and not providing meal breaks, even though the time spent on them was subtracted from paychecks, it says. the complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina in Asheville.
No amount has yet been given, but the complaint filed by McRee’s attorney, Matthew Earl Lee of Raleigh, called for certification of a class action and an award of compensatory and liquidated damages for hours unpaid additional charges as well as penalties, attorney’s fees and more.
As of May 3, the court’s electronic filing system showed no response from HCA. Company spokeswoman Nancy Lindell said HCA would not comment on pending litigation.
The for-profit HCA purchased the nonprofit Mission for $1.5 billion in 2019. Since then, it has faced a series of lawsuits and other challenges. The most significant are federal penalties following the deaths of emergency room patients, federal and state lawsuits alleging an illegal monopoly, and a lawsuit filed by North Carolina Attorney General and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Josh Stein alleging failure to maintain levels of cancer and emergency care as promised before the sale.
In this most recent suit, McRee said she worked as a respiratory therapist for Mission from July 2002 until the company was purchased by HCA, before leaving in July 2022. She worked primarily in a unit medical-surgical and a neurotrauma intensive care unit, but also occasionally as a ground respiratory therapist.
In one example, her complaint stated that she usually clocked in at 6:23 a.m. and started work, but her pay reflected a 6:30 a.m. start time. She usually ended her shift around 7 p.m., but sometimes she had to work later, even though she noticed that the time she was paid for only lasted until 7 p.m.
“Defendant is a large and highly sophisticated employer, fully aware of the requirements of federal and state laws regarding the payment of wages,” the suit states.
“The plaintiff cannot yet indicate the exact number of people in a similar situation, but asserts, based on information and belief, that the group of potential members of the Fair Labor Standards Act collective consists of approximately 1,000 people or more,” he says.
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Joel Burgess has lived in WNC for more than 20 years, covering politics, government and other news. He has written award-winning stories on topics ranging from gerrymandering to police use of force. Do you have any advice? Contact Burgess at jburgess@citizentimes.com, 828-713-1095 or on Twitter @AVLreporter. Help us support this type of journalism by subscribing to the Citizen Times..
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Federal Lawsuit: Mission Hospital Illegally Withheld Pay of 1,000 Workers.
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