Labor department orders hospital to reimburse employees

Valley Baptist Medical Center in Brownsville and Harlingen issued checks this month to some of its employees after a two-year investigation by the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor concluded the hospital failed to pay for overtime and unused meal breaks.

The DOL ordered VBMC to issue the reimbursements based on provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The reimbursements covered only the period between March 2009 and March 2011 because of a two-year statute of limitations that applies to recovery of back wages under the law.

A VBMC employee who wished to remain anonymous said she contacted the Department of Labor more than two years ago after she grew frustrated in her attempts to get management’s attention on the issue. She said that in years past workers had the option of clocking out for meal breaks and were automatically paid for skipped breaks for which they didn’t clock out, though changes in payroll procedure deducted pay for meal breaks even when employees didn’t take them. Claiming pay owed for missed breaks, meanwhile, became so cumbersome that many employees didn’t bother, according to the source, whose own reimbursement for the two-year period came to thousands of dollars.

“It wasn’t the money,” she said. “It was the principle.”

The source claimed that hundreds of VBMC employees received similar checks. VBMC officials would not say how many em-ployees were involved or how much money was reimbursed. In a prepared statement, the hospital said the pay situation has been corrected but did not specify how. VBMC management also dodged specific questions from The Herald about what flaws in the system caused employees to be shorted on pay and how long the situation had existed, and whether hospital management knew about the problem but declined to address it.

This is the VBMC statement in full:

“Over the last several months the Wage and Hour Department of the United States Department of Labor has been conducting an audit of Valley Baptist’s payroll processes, similar to audits conducted at other hospitals across the country. They determined that Valley Baptist owed some employees and former employees’ wages related to two processes.

“The first issue was the calculation of overtime for some employees as processed by our information systems. The second issue was the determination of skipped meals during work hours. Both of these issues have been corrected, going forward.

“The Wage and Hour Department completed a thorough audit, provided us with the individuals to be paid, and those current and former employees to whom Valley Baptist owed wages received checks this week.

“Valley Baptist welcomed the opportunity to work with the Wage and Hour Department and to correct any unintentional errors that impacted employee compensation.”

Sclark@brownsvilleherald.com