Modified: 4/23/2023 4:28:48 AM
In late December, two longtime respiratory therapists at Gifford Medical Center in Randolph discovered an unexpected bonanza — roughly $100,000 each — in their final paychecks of 2022.
Until last year, Timothy Flanagan and David Gehlbach were unaware that the medical center had been drastically underpaying them for working on-call shifts.
Instead of getting time and a half for the overtime shifts, as required under federal and Vermont employment laws, the two therapists were paid in the $10- to $12-an-hour range. It was about one-third of their regular rate and not much more than the state’s minimum wage.
The mega end-of-the-year payouts were apparently Gifford’s way of trying to make good. Before anyone awards Gifford an “A” for honesty, however, there’s more to the story.
The Dec. 30 checks supposedly covered two years of underpayments. Flanagan and Gehlbach, who have worked at Gifford for 15 and 12 years, respectively, contend it’s been going on much longer.
On April 4, Gehlbach and Flanagan filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court to recover “unpaid back wages” for all of their overtime work.
The federal suit doesn’t mention any dollar figures. For one of his clients, the amount could exceed $1 million, Steven Robinson, a Waterbury, Vt., attorney who is representing the respiratory therapists, told me.
For a small hospital that suffered almost $3.7 million in operating losses during its most recent fiscal year, the lawsuit’s timing can’...
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