The U.S. Department of Labor has recovered more than $77,000 in back wages for 21 Sanford Regional Hospital emergency medical technicians who were denied compensation for their “on-call” work hours, in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Sanford Regional Hospital, owned and operated by the Sanford Health Network, is a public health care facility located in Worthington.  “Because the employers in this case were unaware of the federal wage and hour standards governing on-call work time, Sanford Regional Hospital EMTs were made to work more than 40 hours in many weeks without receiving proper compensation,” said Jose Medina, district director of the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division in Minneapolis, Minn. “Ignorance of the law is not an excuse. Employers are legally obligated to ensure that those they hire are properly compensated for their full work periods.”
After conducting employee interviews and reviewing time and payroll records, the Wage and Hour Division determined that Sanford Health Network, Sanford Regional Hospital and the hospital’s chief operations officer, Jeffrey J. Rotert, violated the FLSA by failing to compensate workers for on-call hours exceeding 40 in a week  Generally, an on-call employee who is not required to remain on the employers’ premises, and who is free to enjoy uninterrupted leisure time for personal activities, is not working and does not need to be compensated while on-call. That was not the case with these EMT workers. They were required to be on-call while at home and had to remain in proximity and in a state of readiness to report to their ambulances within six minutes of being called. On-call time becomes compensable under the FLSA when the on-call conditions are so restrictive – as in this case – or the calls to duty so frequent that the employee cannot effectively use on-call time for personal purposes. (click on link to read full story)