Nurses at MedStar Washington Hospital Center protest, claim wage theft by hospital administrators

Unionized nurses at MedStar Washington Hospital Center in the District of Columbia protested Thursday against the hospital, alleging wage theft.

The protest, organized by the National Nurses United union, which represents 2,200 people at the hospital in Northwest, was held outside the facility for an hour Thursday morning.

The union also sent a letter this week to D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb detailing their claims and asking that his office investigate them as wage theft violations under the D.C. Wage Payment and Collection Act.

In the letter, the union representative said nurses in the emergency department are working through meal breaks without the pay they are owed and said the hospital repeatedly altered records to make it look like nurses were getting their breaks.

“Wages were deducted from my paycheck without my knowledge, and I’m now forced to review every pay stub to ensure nothing else has been altered,” emergency department nurse Ashley Marshall said in a press release from the union.

The nurses also said they were coerced to come to work early and to clock out early while remaining at the hospital overtime to complete patient charts, and that there were multiple times where nurses were paid late or not paid the full amount owed them.

“A week before Christmas [on pay day] I did not receive a paycheck at all. It shouldn’t be our job to have to demand that we get paid correctly. We should be paid correctly because it is the hospital’s legal obligation to pay us correctly,” said operating room nurse Linda Spring.

Union officials told WUSA-TV they estimate that about 80 emergency department nurses had issues with meal breaks, around 50 operating room nurses were paid late and more than 800 nurses across the hospital had overtime concerns.

In a statement Thursday, the hospital said: “We are committed to paying all our associates fairly, accurately and on-time … Recently, we became aware of some concerns regarding pay for certain nurses. … where we have confirmed a mistake, we have issued corrected paychecks to impacted nurses. We are continuing our review and will expedite correction of any errors we identify.”