$1.9 million recovered for Kent County Memorial Hospital workers denied overtime

HARTFORD, Conn. (WLNE) — Kent County Memorial Hospital and the U.S. Department of Labor have reached a settlement to recover $1.9 million in back wages and liquidated damages for 853 healthcare workers.

These workers had to work through their breaks and were not compensated during the COVID 19 pandemic, according to the U.S. Department of Labor and Training.

Kent County was found to have automatically deducted 30-minute breaks from employee hours despite them working through breaks to meet staffing needs.

The settlement spans from July 30, 2019 through December 31, 2022, and the Wage and Hour Division recovered $100,000 in civil penalties from Kent County and Care New England Health System.

In a statement the violations were described as “willful.”

Included in the settlement, Kent County has also agreed to overhaul timekeeping practices to prevent future violations.

Reached for comment, a representative from Kent County Memorial Hospital stated:

Kent Hospital is fully committed to ensuring that our employees receive a meal break or payment if they work through the break. Our past policy required an employee to notify their manager if they worked through the break, and for the hospital to then manually add the meal break time back into the payroll system. In 2023, we automated the process to ensure that every meal break is appropriately recorded. Employees now personally verify each day at the time clocks whether they took a meal break or should instead receive payment for that time. This information is automatically entered into the payroll system.