William Ozier, Member at Bass, Berry & Sims PLC, is quoted regarding the Fair Labor Standards Act, the standard practices most hospitals use for tracking employee time, and recommendations for hospitals in Nashville Medical News. The article by Sharon H. Fitzgerald, titled “Three Nashville-Area Hospitals Sued for Meal Break Compensation” discusses recent suits against area hospitals contending that automatically excluding meal breaks from employees’ compensated hours may be in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, and appears in the February edition.
From the article:
William N. Ozier, attorney with Bass, Berry & Sims, said most hospitals track employees’ time with a Kronos™ or similar system for clocking in and out. Most use the automatic deduction rather than requiring employees to clock out for a meal break and clock back in, since many times employees forget in the midst of their busy days. Using a Kronos-like system, employees slide a card similar to a credit card through the machine, and should hold down a button when they clock out if they worked through the meal break. “The instructions are very clear on these terminals,” said Ozier, who is VUMC counsel for that suit and who also agreed to talk to Nashville Medical News generally about the issue. He added that there’s usually an opportunity for employees to also inform an administrator if their time card doesn’t reflect the number of hours worked.
Encouraging supervisors to be open to employees who need to change their recorded hours worked was a recommendation to hospitals by both Stevens and Ozier.
To read the full article, click here.