Class Action News

U.S. Nurses File Class Action Suits Against Hospitals For Conspiring to Fix Wages

NEW YORK: Nurses in the United States filed four class action lawsuits Tuesday against some of the major hospitals in the country, alleging these hospitals illegally conspired to fix their wages, depriving them of hundreds of millions of dollars. Among the defendants is the No 1 healthcare chain in the country, the Nashville, Tennessee-based HCA Inc., which runs 180 hospitals. The nurses are backed in their efforts by the country's largest health-care union, the Service Employees International Union.

The lawsuits alleged that the hospitals discussed nurses' wages in meetings among themselves, over telephone and in written surveys in order to coordinate and curtail the nurses' pay. The suits are filed in the federal courts in Chicago, Memphis, Tennessee, Albany, New York and San Antonio, Texas. The lawyers for the nurses had interviewed several current and former hospital employees, including HR staff, in preparing the lawsuits, which have been filed against 20 unionized and non-unionized hospital systems in the four cities. Among the hospitals sued, besides HCA, are Ascension Health, Catholic Health East, Resurrection Health Care, Methodist Healthcare System, Advocate Health Care and Vanguard Health Systems.

A spokesperson for HCA termed the suits as frivolous adding these were generated by a union and a law firm designed to create publicity in markets where unions are trying to get membership. In the U.S. demand for full-time nurses exceeds supply by almost 170,000 according to estimates. Wage increases for nurses have been described as insignificant as these stagnated in 2003 and then fell in 2004. The Washington, D.C.-based law firm, which filed the suits, estimated that nurses in the Albany area were underpaid by about $6,000 a year. Nurses in Chicago lost $5,000 a year, while nurses in San Antonio lost $1,300 a year and those in Memphis $14,000 a year. A lawyer for the nurses said the hospitals concerned have decided to increase their profits on the backs of their nurses. "Nurse pay should be set by the market, not by a secret agreement among hospitals." 

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	Did You Know?
	Class action lawsuits has many advantages. Class action lawsuits may offer a number of advantages because they aggregate a large number of individualized claims into one representational lawsuit. First, aggregation may increase the efficiency of the legal process, and lower the costs of litigation. Second, a class action ensures that a defendant who engages in widespread harm -- but does so minimally against each individual plaintiff -- must compensate those individuals for their injuries. Third, in "limited fund" cases, a class action ensures that all plaintiffs receive relief and that early-filing plaintiffs do not raid the fund of all its assets before other plaintiffs may be compensated. Finally, a class action avoids the situation where different court rulings could create "incompatible standards" of conduct for the defendant to follow.