DECISION AND ORDER
Plaintiffs Michelle Fengler and Marianne Meyers, each claiming to be a current or former employee of defendant Crouse Health Hospital, Inc. (“Crouse Hospital”), have commenced this action against that and several other entities, alleged to be “related organizations”, as well as two individual defendants asserting, inter alia, that they have violated the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, as amended (“FLSA”), 29 U.S.C. § 201 et seq. In the claim relevant to the issues now before the court plaintiffs maintain that defendants’ meal break deduction policy and the automatic payroll deduction protocol through which it is implemented, in combination with chronic understaffing and the expectations of administrators that employees be available, including during meal breaks, to attend to patient care demands, have resulted in the defendants’ failure to properly compensate their hourly employees.
The two named plaintiffs, who have since been joined by several other current or former employees of defendants consenting to become plaintiffs in the action, now seek the court’s permission to have the matter proceed as a collective action pursuant to 29 U.S.C. § 216(b). In their motion, plaintiffs request that notice be sent to all of defendants’ current and former hourly employees whose pay at any
Having carefully considered plaintiffs’ request and the record now before the court, applying the relatively generous standard for granting such requests at this procedural juncture, I conclude that plaintiffs have only partially met their burden of demonstrating that the proposed class members are all similarly situated. Accordingly, I will permit the matter to proceed as a collective action, with necessary information being provided by the defendants and notice given to effectuate this end, only with respect to current and former hourly employees with direct patient care responsibilities working at Crouse Hospital, but will otherwise deny plaintiffs’ application, without prejudice.
I. BACKGROUND
At this early stage, not a great deal is known regarding either the two named plaintiffs or the twenty-one defendants listed. Plaintiffs’ complaint states only that at relevant times they were employees, for purposes of both the FLSA and the New York Labor Law, and employed within this district, without disclosing either their positions or the identities of their respective employers. See Complaint (Dkt. No. 1) ¶ 73. Affirmations given in support of the instant application for permission to proceed as a collective action by the two named plaintiffs and three other individuals who have consented to join in the action are only slightly more revealing. Each of those affirmations states that the particular plaintiff was an hourly employee of Crouse Hospital, with dates of employment given; none of those affirmations, however, discloses the nature of the particular plaintiffs employment. Fengler Aff. (Dkt. No. 46-10) 112; Francis Aff. (Dkt. No. 46-11) ¶ 2; Meyers Aff. (Dkt. No. 46-12) ¶ 2; Foster Aff. (Dkt. No. 46-13) ¶ 2; Hare Aff. (Dkt. No. 46-14) ¶2.
The information provided by the plaintiffs regarding the several named defendants is equally scant. In one paragraph of their complaint plaintiffs list the twenty-one defendants and allege that they “are related organizations through, for example, common membership, governing bodies, trustees and/or officers and benefit plans.” Complaint (Dkt. No. 1) ¶ 14. According to the plaintiffs, defendants operate various health care facilities and centers, including Crouse Hospital, CNY Medical Center, Crouse Help People Employee Assistance Program, Crouse Business Center, Outpatient Surgery Center in Crouse Physicians Office Building, Chemical Dependency Treatment Services, Commonwealth Place, Madison Irving Same Day Surgery Center, Marley Education Center, Crouse Prompt care and Crouse Hospital School of Nursing. Id. ¶ 17. Plaintiffs’ complaint also alleges that defendant Paul Kronen-berg, M.D. is the President of the Crouse entities, with responsibility to manage the various health care operations referenced, and that defendant John Bergemann, as Director of Human Resources, has autonomy in overseeing various facets of those operations, including payroll and compensation services. 1 Id. ¶¶ 24-71.
According to the defendants, Crouse Hospital, licensed for 506 beds, employs approximately 2200 hourly employees, the majority of whom are unionized, occupying
Defendants’ opposition papers also supply some of the missing information regarding the plaintiffs, including in particular the five who have provided affirmations in support of plaintiffs motion for collective action certification. Plaintiff Mary Ellen Hare was previously employed as a registered nurse (“RN”) in the Medical/Surgical Float Pool at Crouse Hospital. Borchik Aff. (Dkt. No. 116) ¶ 7; Stahl Aff. (Dkt. No. 116-16) ¶ 7. Plaintiff Marianne Francis likewise is a former employee of Crouse Hospital who worked as an RN on the Medical Surgical Floor. Phinney Aff. (Dkt. No. 116-4) ¶¶ 1, 7. Plaintiff Michelle Fengler currently works as an RN in the Maternal/Child Float Pool at Crouse Hospital. Tibbitts Aff. (Dkt. No. 116-7) ¶¶ 1, 7. Another former employee, plaintiff Kelly Foster, was employed by Crouse Hospital as a per diem nurse in the Intensive Care Unit. Brown Aff. (Dkt. No. 116-10) ¶6. Also formerly employed by Crouse Hospital, plaintiff Marianne Meyers worked in the Emergency Department as an RN. Corsoniti Aff. (Dkt. No. 116-13) ¶ 7.
Crouse Hospital utilizes a computerized time-keeping and payroll system known as Kronos. Bergemann Aff. (Dkt. No. 116— 19) ¶7. In accordance with established practices at the facility, an hourly employee who works five or more hours is entitled to a thirty-minute unpaid meal break, which supervisors and managers ensure is available to employees each day. Id. ¶¶ 8-9. The Kronos program automatically deducts thirty minutes from an employee’s paycheck, obviating the need for clocking in and out for meal breaks. Id. ¶ 8.
Crouse Hospital has a policy requiring employees to be compensated when they work through their meal breaks. Bergem-ann Aff. (Dkt. No. 116-19) ¶¶ 6, 9. Under that policy, each employee’s supervisor or manager is responsible for enforcing the policy. Id. When an employee is required to work during a meal break, however, he or she must report such an occasion to the supervisor or manager by sending an email or voice mail, leaving a note, communicating in person or, most commonly, completing a form designated for this purpose. Id. ¶ 10. The supervisor or manager responsible for approving that employee’s payroll then is tasked with making an adjustment effectuating cancellation of the meal break in the Kronos system. Id. ¶ 9.
II. PROCEDURAL HISTORY
The two originally named plaintiffs commenced this action on November 13, 2008. Dkt. No. 1. Plaintiffs’ complaint sets forth five separate causes of action, alleging 1) violation of the FLSA; 2) violation of the New York Labor Law; 3) violation of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended, 29 U.S.C. § 1101 et seq. (“ERISA”), for failure to keep accurate records; 4) breach of fiduciary duty, also in violation of ERISA; and 5) estoppel. Since commencement of the action, a total of one hundred and one individuals claiming to be present or former hourly employees of one or more of the defendants have consented to join in the action as plaintiffs. Dkt. Nos. 42-45, 50, 52, 61, 74-75, 79, 80, 85, 87, 91, 135, 142.
On November 18, 2008, plaintiffs moved to certify this matter as a collective action.
2
Dkt. No. 46. Hand-in-hand with
III. DISCUSSION
A. Controlling Legal Principles
In the portion of their complaint implicated by their motion, plaintiffs contend that defendants’ policies and practices of making automatic meal break deductions, coupled with their knowledge of or indifference as to whether their hourly employees are working during those meal breaks without compensation, violates the FLSA. That act allows for the maintenance of collective actions by multiple employees subject to the same, allegedly unlawful practice or policy through an “opt in” procedure set out in 29 U.S.C. § 216(b). Section 216(b) provides, in relevant part, that
[a]n action ... may be maintained against any employer ... in any Federal or State court of competent jurisdiction by any one or more employees for and in behalf of himself or themselves and other employees similarly situated. No employee shall be a party plaintiff to any such action unless he gives his consent in writing to become such a party and such consent is filed in the court in which such action is brought.
29 U.S.C. § 216(b). The collective action mechanism serves to both further the broad, remedial purposes of the FLSA and promote efficiency in adjudication of such claims.
Lynch v. United Services Auto. Ass’n,
[t]he collective action procedure allows for efficient adjudication of similar claims, so “similarly situated” employees, whose claims are often small and not likely to be brought on an individual basis, may join together and pool their resources to prosecute their claims.
[collective adjudication will avoid the proliferation of individual lawsuits that could result in disparate rulings and wasting of judicial and party resources. . Requiring [the named plaintiff] and opt-in plaintiffs to file separate cases in multiple federal district courts would not be an economic use of judicial resources.
Id. at 371.
Both in this circuit and elsewhere, courts generally employ a two-tiered analysis to determine whether an FLSA suit may proceed as a collective action.
Ruggles v. WellPoint, Inc.,
A plaintiffs burden at this preliminary stage is minimal.
Lynch,
The second phase of the process entails a far more reaching factual analysis to determine whether the class members are actually similarly situated, and the case should continue on as a collective action.
Lynch,
This action is at the initial, preliminary certification stage. At this point plaintiffs bear the burden of demonstrating that they are similarly situated to the remainder of the proposed class, requiring at a minimum that they make a “modest factual showing” that they and the putative class members were “victims of a common policy or plan that violated the law.”
Ruggles,
In their motion, plaintiffs argue that all of the defendants’ hourly employees are subject to the same automatic meal deduction practice, implemented through use of the Kronos payroll accounting system, and that this common thread alone suffices to justify collective action certification and the sending of notices to all present and past hourly workers affected by this policy. 6 To be sure, there are some decisions which appear to support this “reduction to the least common denominator” approach to collective action certification. Frye v. Baptist Mem. Hosp., Inc., 2:07-CV-02708, slip op. (W.D.Tenn. Sept. 16, 2008), is such a case. Frye involved a similar practice of automatic meal deductions. In its decision approving preliminary certification the Frye court, while noting that the practice or policy which made the deductions potentially unlawful — the failure to compensate workers for hours worked off the clock — was far from a ‘common policy’, nonetheless concluded that all employees who were subject to the automatic meal deduction were similarly situated, for purposes of section 216(b). Frye, slip op. at pp. 16-18.
As plaintiffs in this case have acknowledged, the mere existence and implementation of a policy or practice of making automatic deductions for scheduled meal breaks in and of itself does not violate the FLSA. See Wage and Hour Division, U.S. Dep’t of Labor, Factsheet No. 53, The Health Care Industry and Hours Worked (2008). It is the failure of an employer to compensate employees who work through those unpaid meal breaks, and to police and oversee hourly workers and their supervisors to ensure that when working through or during unpaid meal breaks they are compensated, that potentially runs afoul of the Act. Id.
By all accounts the members of the group which plaintiffs ask the court to prehminarily certify occupy literally hundreds of job positions some of which involve patient care responsibilities, while others do not. This, of course, does not necessarily undermine plaintiffs’ motion since under section 216(b) parties may be similarly situated, despite not occupying the same positions or performing the same
Although the standard which governs plaintiffs’ application is lax, and their burden modest, a court must nonetheless take a measured approach when addressing a request for collective action certification, mindful of the potential burden associated with defending against an FLSA claim involving a broadly defined collective group ofplaintiffs.
See Adair v. Wisconsin Bell, Inc.,
No. 08-C-280,
Addressing the specifics of the case, I note that all of the five plaintiffs who have given affirmations are former hourly employees of Crouse Hospital. Each of those plaintiffs appears to have had direct patient care responsibilities while working there. Plaintiffs complaint alleges that even though administrators at Crouse are aware that employees are performing compensable work through many scheduled meal breaks, they are not paid for the work, going on to make the following allegation regarding to what that is attributable:
Crouse understands and requires that its employees do not sacrifice patient care in order to take their meal breaks and that they therefore perform work during their meal breaks. In fact, Crouse expectations of its employees in that regard would be consistent with its employees’ dedication to providing health care service, even if that means performing work during their meal breaks.
Complaint (Dkt. No. 1) ¶ 80. Similar representations are echoed in plaintiffs’ affirmations, all of which follow a strikingly similar pattern, alleging that “it was common” that plaintiffs and others would not receive the scheduled thirty minute uninterrupted meal period during their shifts, adding that “[t]he reason — as the Hospital knew and expected — was that it was of paramount importance that the employees take care of the patients’ needs.”
7
See,
These same conditions obviously do not extend to non-patient care workers at the hospital including, for example, cafeteria workers, security staff, and clerical workers, and indeed there is nothing in the record now before the court to suggest that the same conditions prevailed with regard to those employees which would mandate their working through or during breaks, with awareness of defendants’ administrators. Under these circumstances, I find that plaintiffs have failed to make even a modest showing that all hourly workers at Crouse Hospital, regardless of title, are similarly situated.
With this as a base, I conclude that plaintiffs have failed to sustain their burden of demonstrating that all hourly workers employed by all of the defendants in this case are similarly situated. I do find, however, that certain of defendants’ employees are similarly situated insofar as the allegedly unlawful practices are concerned. When presented with a situation such as this, the court retains the discretion to reformulate the proposed definition given by the plaintiffs of the potential opt-in class.
Ruggles,
In order to effectuate the mailing of notices of the pendency of this suit as a collective action and to invite potential group members to elect to opt in, plaintiffs request that the court direct defendants to provide the “name, current or last known address, phone number, social security number, location of employment, dates of employment, dates of birth, and e-mail address” for each potential opt-in plaintiff. Plaintiffs’ Memorandum (Dkt. No. 46-2) at p. 1. Defendants object to the suggestion that they be required to disclose personally identifiable information beyond that needed to effectuate the giving of notice.
Like most pretrial discovery, plaintiffs’ request involves a matter which is entrusted to the court’s sound discretion.
See Wills v. Amerada Hess Corp.,
C. Notice
Section 216(b) manifests a preference that when collective action certification is granted, a court-controlled notice be provided to potential putative plaintiffs, rather than permitting unregulated solicitation efforts to secure joinder by those individuals.
See Ruggles,
591 F.Suppüd at 163-64,
Among their submissions, plaintiffs have included a proposed notice to be sent to putative opt-in plaintiffs, patterned after the Federal Judicial Center (FJC) sample notice for use in Rule 23 class actions. Defendants object to the contents of the proposed notice as well as plaintiffs’ suggestion that the notice be published and posted, in addition to being sent by mail to
I agree that there are certain difficulties associated with plaintiffs’ proposed notice. My preference, however, is that in the first instance the parties should be given an opportunity to negotiate the content of a notice which would be acceptable to the court and consistent with the mandates of section 216(b). If the parties are unable to reach agreement, then the court stands ready to draft its own notice, guided by the parties’ countering proposals.
In terms of the manner of communication, the court believes that in the first instance notices should be sent to all potential opt-in plaintiffs by first class mail. I further find that posting of the notice on job site bulletin boards is also prudent, but that it is not necessary to order the other means of distribution proposed by the plaintiffs, and that a sixty day opt-in deadline is appropriate.
IV. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
While the record now before the court, including the affirmations of the named plaintiffs in this case, are lacking in the specificity noted in many other reported decisions, they do disclose a potential, alleged FSLA violation at Crouse Hospital resulting from the use of the Kronos system to make automatic meal break deductions for hourly workers, coupled with the fact that employees at those facilities directly engaged in patient care are required on occasion to work through or during those breaks, without compensation, due to the patient care demands associated with their positions. I will therefore approve preliminary certification of this matter as a collective action, though with a definition of potential opt-in employees significantly reduced in scope from that initially proposed by the plaintiffs, and will provide the plaintiffs leave, perhaps after engaging in further discovery, to reapply for additional collective action certification.
I will also grant, in part, plaintiffs’ request for discovery from the defendants of the identities of potential opt-in plaintiffs, including names and last known addresses, but reject plaintiffs additional request for further, inherently private, personal identity information with regard to those current and former employees. Turning to the contents of the notice to be given to potential group members, I am confident that the parties can agree upon the contents of a notice to be approved by the court and sent to potential opt-in plaintiffs.
Based upon the foregoing it is hereby
ORDERED, as follows:
1) Plaintiffs’ request for preliminary certification of this matter as a collective action (Dkt. No. 46) is GRANTED with respect to the following putative plaintiff class:
All present and former hourly employees of Crouse Hospital, including but not limited to registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, and certified nurses’ assistants, with direct patient care responsibilities who have been subject to automatic meal break deductions through use of the Kronos system, and who have or may have worked through or during unpaid meal breaks without compensation at any time during the past three years.
2) Defendants are directed, within thirty (30) days from the date of this order, to provide to plaintiffs’ counsel a list of all employees falling into the aforementioned category, including each employee’s name, current or last known address, dates of employment, and position(s) held.
3) The parties are directed to confer with an eye toward jointly presenting to
4) Once the notice is approved in form, it shall be sent by first class mail to all potential plaintiffs in the ease and shall be posted by the defendants conspicuously in approved areas where other labor and related notices are typically posted. The notice will provide for a sixty (60) day opt-in deadline.
Notes
. Certain of the originally named defendants have been dismissed from the action, on stipulation. See Dkt. Nos. 104, 157-165, 169.
. Many of the cases cited, as well as some of the submissions of the parties, refer to the present motion as seeking to certify a class. Because the procedure now being undertaken under 29 U.S.C. § 216(b) is distinctly different from an application for class certification, including under Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure — a request which plaintiffs have advised they contemplate making in the future — and to avoid confusion, I have chosen
. In their opposition papers, defendants assert that plaintiffs have failed to meet their threshold burden of demonstrating that the potential opt-in employees, as described in their motion, are similarly situated to the named plaintiffs, noting the paucity of evidence regarding similarities, particularly with respect to employees of many of the entities sued. Defendants also object to portions of the notice proposed by the plaintiffs to be sent to potential opt-in current and former hourly employees, and additionally challenge plaintiffs’ right to obtain personally identifiable information beyond names and addresses necessary for purposes of sending the notice.
. Unlike applications for class certification under Rule 23, which are dispositive and thus beyond the non-consensual jurisdiction of magistrate judges,
see Nelson v. Nationwide Mortgage Corp.,
. A plaintiff seeking certification of a collective action under section 216(b) must also establish that there are similarly situated employees who desire to opt in and become plaintiffs in the case.
Dybach v. Stale of Florida Dep’t of Corr.,
. While plaintiffs’ motion initially addressed hourly employees of the many defendants sued, they have now refined their request, narrowing its focus to involve only hourly employees of defendants Crouse Health Hospital, Inc., and Crouse Health System, Inc. See Dkt. No. 166. Based upon the record now before the court, Crouse Health System, Inc. is the parent company of Crouse Health Hospital, Inc., which operates Crouse Hospital, and has no employees. See Bergemann Aff. (Dkt. No. 116-19) ¶ 23. Plaintiffs’ motion is therefore being regarded as seeking collective action certification only with respect to past and present hourly employees of Crouse Hospital.
. The fact that affidavits submitted in support of plaintiffs' motion appear to be derived
. Observing that the FLSA statute of limitations, while two years for ordinary violations, expands to three in cases of willful violations, plaintiffs request that the potential group include all hourly employees working for the