Sanford settles claim with EMTs for overtime pay

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WORTHINGTON — Sanford Medical Center Worthington has settled a claim with the U.S. Labor Department after a complaint-based investigation revealed the company’s failure to comply with the Fair Labor Standards Act.

The investigation dates back to July 1, 2008, when Sanford officially gained ownership of the local hospital. A press release issued Tuesday by the U.S. Labor Department detailed Sanford’s violation, in which 21 emergency medical technicians on its staff were not given overtime compensation for on-call work hours logged from July 1, 2008, to Jan. 10, 2010.

As a result of the violation, Sanford was required to pay more than $77,000 in unpaid overtime wages to the EMTs.

An investigation into the unpaid overtime began on Jan. 10, 2010, when the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Labor Department contacted the hospital, according to Jeff Rotert, chief operating officer of Sanford Medical Center Worthington. A typical investigation can go back two years from the date of notification, but because the hospital changed ownership on July 1, 2008, overtime pay could only be recouped from an 18-month period.

Rotert said the Wage and Hour Division conducted a “house-wide” look at Sanford’s pay practices in early 2010 before focusing in on EMT pay.

In early 2009, Rotert said the hospital developed two different levels of call for its EMT service. The primary call, classified as a six-minute response by the Department of Labor, paid employees at an hourly rate (minimum wage) for both on-call services and actual run time. The other level is a secondary call, which he likened to a back-up crew with fewer restrictions, according to the Fair Labor Standards Act.

“Our error was calculating (the primary call) as work time and not as a premium time of call,” Rotert said. “They were paid the call rate … but all those hours need to go into the overtime calculation.”

Rhonda Burke, a public affairs officer with the U.S. Labor Department’s Chicago, Ill., office, said the Sanford case was an issue of people “really not aware of the rules here.”

“This (case was) a little bit different because of the on-call aspect,” said Burke. “There’s different types of being on call. In this case, (EMTs) need to respond within six minutes.

“On-call time becomes compensatable under the Fair Labor Standards Act when the conditions are so restrictive that … the employee really can’t do anything on the on-call time that’s personal,” she added.

Once Sanford was notified of the Fair Labor Standards Act violation, Burke said the hospital was “very cooperative.”

“We were glad to get through the audit and we are glad that what was owed the employees was paid to them,” added Rotert.

The labor department’s investigation was closed on Nov. 9, and payments were made to the 21 EMTs in December, he said.

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