Nationwide Children’s Hospital Failed to Pay Employees for Work During Meal Breaks, Lawsuit Alleges

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Nationwide Children’s Hospital has failed to pay employees for time spent working through meal breaks, a proposed class and collective action claims.

The 16-page lawsuit alleges Nationwide Children’s Hospital, a nonprofit pediatric hospital and research institute affiliated with the Ohio State University College of Medicine, automatically deducts 30-minute meal breaks from an employee’s hours, regardless of whether they’ve actually taken an uninterrupted break.

Per the suit, this practice has caused employees to work hours for which they have not been paid, in violation of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

The plaintiff, a phlebotomist who has worked for Nationwide Children’s Hospital since January, says she and other employees are often “too busy with work” to take a full, uninterrupted meal break. The case says workers frequently skip their breaks altogether, take shortened meal breaks, or are interrupted from breaks by “substantive job duties.”

According to the suit, Nationwide Children’s Hospital has no policy or procedure for workers to report missed, shortened or interrupted meal breaks.

“Consequently, a daily meal break deduction was taken from employees’ hours worked, regardless of whether Named Plaintiff and other similarly situated employees received a fully uninterrupted meal break,” the complaint contends.

The lawsuit argues that employees who worked during their automatically deducted meal breaks are owed unpaid overtime wages given they typically work more than 40 hours per week.

The case looks to represent current and former hourly, non-exempt healthcare employees who were paid by Nationwide Children’s Hospital for at least 40 hours of work during any workweek and had a meal break deduction taken from their compensable hours within the past three years and through the final disposition of the suit.

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