CANTON, Mass − Nurses at Baystate Visiting Nurse Association and Hospice filed a class action suit against Baystate Health today in Hampden Superior Court seeking to recover unpaid wages and overtime that has been illegally withheld by the employer for several years. To obtain a copy of the lawsuit, contact David Schildmeier at 781-249-0430 or dschildmeier@mnarn.org.
The VNA nurses are routinely required to make preparations before their first home care visits for the day and subsequently to complete lengthy documentation of their visits, but are frequently not paid for that work which can sometimes take several hours per day. Computerized documentation has become more lengthy and cumbersome in recent years, but no accommodation has been made to allow nurses time to complete the required documentation during the normal course of the workday. As a result nurses have been forced to work many hours of unpaid time each week.
Attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan, who is representing the nurses, said, "It is a basic principle that employers must pay employees for all the hours they have worked. These nurses work long hours caring for their patients, and then after hours they must complete lengthy paperwork. It is appalling that Baystate would think it can get away without paying them for this time."
Baystate has been locked in a two-year dispute with its nurses at Baystate Franklin Medical Center regarding its demand to limit those nurses the right to overtime pay, while at the same time the organization has been failing to pay its BVNA&H nurses for their hours of work. Baystate Visiting Nurse Association & Hospice is a wholly owned subsidiary of Baystate Health. While illegally withholding wages from the nurses, Baystate Health is one of the most profitable health care conglomerates in the state, and its. CEO, Mark Tolosky, is one of the highest paid hospital CEOs in New England with a salary and benefits package of nearly $2 million annually.
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