Former Employee Claims STG International Owes Workers for Underpaid Overtime, Missed Breaks

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STG International, Inc. (STGi) is on the receiving end of a proposed class and collective action wherein a former employee claims the healthcare company has failed to pay employees all wages owed and provide proper meal and rest breaks.

The plaintiff says she worked for STGi as a registered nurse between December 2018 and July 2020 in El Paso, Texas and, for the final three months of her employment, at the Otay Mesa Detention Facility in San Diego County. In addition to her hourly wage, the plaintiff was paid bonuses, shift differentials and cash health and welfare payments, identified on her paystubs as “bonus,” “Sd/Oc 3.00,” “Shift Diff/Page,” “Shift Diff 1.00,” “Shift Diff 1.50,” “Shift Diff 1.75,” “Shift Diff 3.50,” “Shift Diff 4.00,” “Cash 4.13” and “Cash 4.18,” the case states.

According to the lawsuit out of California, however, the defendant failed to include this additional remuneration, which was paid to employees directly by STGi, as part of the workers’ regular rates of pay when calculating time-and-a-half overtime wages and meal and rest period premiums. As a result, employees were paid at rates lower than those required by federal and California law, the case alleges.

The plaintiff goes on to claim that the wage statements issued by STGi contained “at least six distinct types of violations.” For example, because the defendant failed to properly calculate overtime and break premiums based on the correct “regular rate of pay,” employees’ wage statements inaccurately stated the total hours worked, gross wages, net wages earned, applicable hourly rates and number of hours worked at each rate, the case relays.

The defendant’s apparent failure to provide all required information on employees’ wage statements rendered them “inaccurate and confusing” to the plaintiff and other workers, the lawsuit alleges, claiming STGi intentionally left out information in order to conceal its underpayment of wages.

Moreover, the lawsuit claims STGi automatically deducted 30-minute meal periods from employees’ time worked regardless of whether an uninterrupted break was actually taken. Per the plaintiff, meal periods were frequently “late, short, interrupted, or missed entirely” given the defendant failed to provide enough coverage for workers to take full, 30-minute off-duty breaks.

As a result of the defendant’s meal break policy, the plaintiff and other employees often worked “multiple hours per workweek” for which they received no compensation, nor one hour of pay at their regular rate for each non-compliant meal or rest break, the suit alleges.

The plaintiff looks to represent anyone who worked for the defendant in California as a non-exempt employee during the past four years through the time the case goes to trial.

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