Overtime Pay Class Action Settlement Benefits Home Health Workers

Employees of Advocate Health Care Network will be compensated for unpaid overtime under the terms of an overtime pay class action settlement.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Sheila Finnegan said she would approve the $4.75 million settlement with no further modifications. Judge Finnegan had recommended changes to the language in the parties’ first draft of the settlement back in March.

The overtime pay class action settlement is expected to be distributed among a collective consisting of the 185 collective members who submitted claims, for an average payout of over $13,000 each.

Fees for the plaintiff’s attorneys totaling $1.4 million will also be drawn from the settlement amount, as will a $15,000 incentive award for lead plaintiff Judith Lukas.

Overtime Pay Class Action Settlement Addresses Classification Issues

Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, certain types of employees get certain legal protections, such as a higher rate of pay for working overtime.

The FLSA sets the overtime rate at one and a half times the regular pay rate. Other types of employees, like those working in executive or professional positions, are considered “exempt” from these requirements.

Whether a particular type of employee is properly classified as “exempt” or as “non-exempt” can be the subject of FLSA lawsuits like this one.

If a court determines the employer classified as “exempt” employees that are more correctly classified as “non-exempt,” the employer may find itself on the hook to compensate those employees for unpaid overtime.

Lukas initiated this unpaid overtime collective action in April 2014, claiming that misclassification by Advocate of certain home health care providers resulted in those employees not receiving overtime pay for time spent performing ancillary duties.

Advocate paid these employees a set rate for each home care visit and an hourly rate for other duties like training, attending meetings, and being on call, according to Lukas.

These employees alleged they were not paid for performing other duties necessary for patient care. In addition to conducting the visits, home health care workers were expected to spend time taking care of related paperwork such as filling out reports, documenting the care given, and managing their own caseload.

Lukas claimed that by classifying these employees as “exempt” from the overtime pay requirements under the FLSA, some of them ended up working overtime without receiving overtime pay.

The parties reached their agreement on the overtime pay class action settlement while Judge Finnegan’s grant of class certification was on appeal to the Seventh Circuit.

The judge had certified the proposed collective for purposes of the FLSA claims and had granted class certification for purposes of litigating other claims.

The certified class included over 300 nurses and therapists that had provided home health care services on behalf of Advocate since April 2011.

Advocate opposed class certification on the grounds that some of these workers had been paid for the ancillary work at issue, and others had not – making it inappropriate to lump them all together in a single class, Advocate argued.

The company dropped its appeal once the parties reached an agreement on the overtime pay class action settlement.

The Advocate Health Care Network Overtime Pay Class Action Lawsuit is Judith Lukas et al v. Advocate Health Care Network and subsidiaries, et al, Case No. 1:14-cv-2740, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

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