Call Center Salaried Nurses Sue Wellpoint, FLSA Overtime Violations Alleged

Wellpoint, Inc., a health insurance and managed care provider to one in nine Americans, has been sued by nurses who staff WellPoint's call center alleging that they were denied overtime pay for at least 3 years. The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court of Northern New York, proposes a collective action to address the nurses' FLSA and state overtime law complaints.

The nurses' jobs included answering telephone calls and entering data into the WellPoint computer system for case management, utilization review, and/or medical management purposes. The nurses were all paid on a salaried basis, a fact that they allege was illegal and done so as to prevent the nurses from being paid the overtime wages that they would have earned as hourly employees.

The nurses further claim that WellPoint failed to keep records of the time that the nurses actually worked, which if the employees were to be awarded overtime would be problematic for WellPoint's defense and mitigation of damages.

For more on this lawsuit, click here to read the story in Employment360. To read the complaint in Ruggles, Fay, et al. v. WellPoint, Inc., case number 08-cv-00201, click here.