Seventy nurses protested outside MedStar Washington Hospital Center on Thursday morning, alleging D.C.’s largest hospital engaged in wage theft and has created a culture that encourages nurses to work extra hours without pay.
National Nurses United, the union representing the 2,200 nurses at the level 1 trauma center in Northwest Washington, filed a complaint this week with the D.C. attorney general’s office, seeking an investigation.
The complaint alleges the hospital falsified time cards to avoid paying emergency department nurses who worked through their lunch break, failed to pay operating room nurses their full salaries on time and pressured nurses to complete patient medical charts after clocking out for the day.
In a statement, hospital spokeswoman So Young Pak said the hospital has issued corrected paychecks to affected nurses, is still reviewing concerns raised by other nurses and will expedite the correction of further errors.
“We are committed to paying all our associates fairly, accurately, and on-time, and we have processes in place to meet this commitment on a daily basis,” the statement said. “Our goal is to calculate pay correctly for all associates every time. We appreciate our associates bringing this issue to our attention and we will take this opportunity to continuously improve our processes for the future.”
A spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office said it would not confirm or deny if an investigation is underway.
The complaint comes amid a national nursing shortage that has made hiring a challenge for local hospitals, including the city’s newest, located in underserved Southeast Washington. In New York City, nearly 15,000 nurses went on strike this week demanding safer staff-to-patient ratios, higher wages and protections against violence on the job.
In Northwest Washington on Thursday morning, cars honked to show their support as the nurses stood in the wind and cold outside the gates of the hospital holding signs that read “We save lives. You steal time,” “Pay me what you owe me” and “Ken Samet’s $7 million is our unpaid wages,” referring to the health system chief executive’s compensation.
The 912-bed teaching hospital is the largest private, nonprofit hospital in the District and one of the 100 largest hospitals in the nation, according to the hospital’s website.
Anne Strauss, a union representative, said that, starting a year ago, nurses in the operating room noticed on-call and overtime pay missing from their paychecks and that during the holidays some did not receive paychecks at all. Nurses were eventually made whole, Strauss said, but problems occurred repeatedly and the union believes at least 50 nurses are owed damages.
In the fall, an emergency department nurse allegedly noticed that although she worked through lunch, someone in management changed her time card to say she took a 30-minute break. At least 80 other nurses in the department discovered their time cards were altered in the same way, Strauss said.
In terms of widespread pay violations, she said, at least 200 nurses indicated in an internal survey that they worked off the clock once a week. Some would clock out but continue working to update patient charts because, they allege, their manager prohibited overtime.
Ashley Marshall, 30, who has been a nurse in the emergency department for a year and a half, was one of the nurses at the protest.
“It just adds more stress to me as a nurse,” she said, “because not only am I working really hard on the floor … in the back of my mind, I’m thinking: ‘Am I gonna have time to check my paycheck before I leave? Am I gonna have to stay late to check my paycheck?’”
Marshall is usually too busy to sit down for lunch in the emergency department, where she said at any given time 70 patients might wait in hallways for beds to open after a doctor deemed their condition serious enough to be admitted. The practice, known as boarding, has been acute this winter, as respiratory illnesses such as the flu and RSV spike.
“It makes me sad,” Marshall said. “The hospital is not living up to the expectations that we are setting on it, and in turn I’m not able to be the best nurse I know I can be.”
Julia Truelove, 32, who has worked at the hospital for eight years, said the nurses filed the complaint in part to understand the full scope of the problem after unsuccessfully seeking more information from the hospital.
“It’s not your job to make sure you’re paid fairly. It’s your boss’s job,” said Truelove, a nurse in the burn trauma intensive care unit. “Ultimately, nurses are getting shortchanged.”
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