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Nurses at Backus Hospital say administrators violate overtime law

Alaysia Robinson, a nursing student, administers a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination center at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
John Locher
/
AP
A nurse administers a vaccine.

Registered nurses at Backus Hospital in Norwich, Connecticut say hospital administrators are violating a state mandatory overtime law. They’ve filed for an injunction in court.

The union representing the nurses cites a law that became effective earlier this year and prohibits nurses from working more than 12 hours in a 24-hour period.

Heather Brauth is one of the hospital's affected nurses and the union's treasurer. She said the hospital had agreed to the new law and the working hours it covers.

“It’s an unsafe situation,” Brauth said. “They want hospitals to stop mandating their nurses to work more than 12-hour shifts. In the last few months, Backus Hospital has continued to mandate their nurses work over 12 hours, in particular in their surgical services department, because these areas are areas of the hospital where patients are coming in potentially needing emergency surgery they need to staff those areas, but they have not come up with any kind of comprehensive staffing plan.”

Lawyer Eric Chester, from the law firm Ferguson, Doyle and Chester, is representing the nurses. He said they’ve spoken to the hospital on several occasions without success.

“I think going to court was the most expedient way to get this resolved,” Chester said. “The Department of Public Health often oversees issues related to this. Because this is an issue related to overtime that can often be overseen by the Department of Labor. But those two agencies involve administrative procedures that often take a long time. This is an issue about patient safety and also the safety of the nurses and their working conditions. So, we felt it was important to try and get a remedy quickly.”

Chester said they hope to have a court decision this week. In the meantime, nurses say they will continue to inform the hospital that they are breaking the law but will keep working.

In a statement, Hartford Hospital said they were surprised and disappointed by the complaint but didn’t comment on whether they felt they were breaking any state laws.

“We are surprised and disappointed by the complaint as we have been collaborating with AFT to establish a sub-committee on this specific matter,” the statement read. “As a long-standing, common industry practice, nurses are assigned their on-call shifts and have the flexibility to work with their colleagues to adjust their schedules if they prefer.”

An award-winning freelance reporter/host for WSHU, Brian lives in southeastern Connecticut and covers stories for WSHU across the Eastern side of the state.