Lawsuit alleges hospital system uses unfair timekeeping policy

A new class-action lawsuit against Valley Health Systems alleges its timekeeping policy violates pay and overtime laws for its hourly workers.

Taylor Stubbins, a former nurse at Spring Valley Medical Center, claims in the lawsuit that non-exempt hourly employees are denied proper pay levels because of a timekeeping policy that rounds to the nearest quarter-hour.

Josh Buck, the lead attorney for Stubbins, said the timekeeping policy is fairly common, despite modernizations in workplace technology that log a worker’s time clocked in to the second. The policy comes from old-fashioned punch clocks and is legal if it is neutral to the worker, he said.

The health system’s rounding policy is based on the minute a worker clocked in, according to the suit, which was filed Sept. 10 in U.S. District Court in Nevada against the hospital and its parent health system. For instance, if a worker clocked in at 7:52 for an 8 a.m. shift, it would round back to 7:45. But a minute later would round forward to the next hour.

“Taylor Stubbins (her time records) should be a wash (over time),” said Buck, a partner at the law firm Thierman Buck. “What you find in the real world, in tandem with a rounding policy, employers also have a strict tardiness policy. It’s exceedingly unlikely that they clock in after their shift. If they do, they get written up for being late.”

Buck said the case is in the early stages with some motions to seek out class members recently filed. He estimated there are 3,000 potential members among the health system’s six hospitals.

Representatives for the hospital and hospital system denied the allegations in a statement Monday.

“Spring Valley Hospital Medical Center strongly denies any wrongdoing or violation of law and intends to vigorously defend this matter,” attorney Wendy Krincek, a shareholder at Littler Mendelson P.C., said in an email. “We feel confident that these allegations will be found to have no merit.”

The complaint also takes issue with the employer’s mobile electronic device policy. It says Stubbins and other similarly situated employees are given a mobile device with patient documentation-related apps used for care tracking and workflow. It said a policy change resulted in the workers needing to monitor the device through their entire shift, including meal and rest breaks.

“Defendants required all its employees to clock out for their meal periods during their workday,” according to the complaint. “Because Plaintiff and all other similarly situated employees were required to keep their employer provided Cerner Mobile Device on their person during their meal periods, Plaintiff and all other similarly situated employees were never completely relieved of duty.”

A similar claim against a health care provider in Washington resulted in a $229 million judgment in favor of workers in April 2024. Providence Health &Services must pay unpaid wages and damages to more than 33,000 hourly employees for unpaid wages related to old quarterly rounding and meal break policies.

Contact McKenna Ross at mross@reviewjournal.com. Follow @mckenna_ross_ on X.