Four former GW Hospital employees sued the hospital in early July, alleging timekeeping and pay practices violated federal and D.C. wage laws and resulted in employees missing out on regular and overtime wages.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on July 6, says the hospital systematically underpaid hourly workers by rounding their time entries to 15-minute intervals, failing to pay them for time spent putting on required scrubs and automatically deducting meal breaks they occasionally worked through. The plaintiffs are seeking to represent three groups of current and former hourly employees and estimate that more than 100 workers could be part of the proposed D.C. class-action lawsuit.

The plaintiffs are requesting GW Hospital award them compensatory damages equal to the amount of their unpaid wages.

GW Hospital did not return a request for comment on the allegations and whether it has reviewed or modified its payroll, timekeeping or compensation policies. GW Hospital was served with the suit July 10, and they are yet to file a response to the suit, which is due July 31.

The plaintiffs — former registered nurses Heidi Bragdon, Kristin Kohn and Patricia Souza, along with former surgical technologist Shameka Ingram — worked at GW Hospital between 1993 and 2026, according to the complaint. The lawsuit alleges the hospital’s practices affected non-exempt hourly employees, including registered nurses, surgical technologists and other clinical and support staff.

Bragdon, Kohn, Souza and Ingram, as well as their attorney, did not return a request for comment on their experiences at GW Hospital, the allegations outlined in the lawsuit or their claims of unpaid wages.

The complaint alleges the hospital rounded employees’ clock-in and clock-out times to 15-minute intervals rather than paying them based on their actual recorded hours. In the suit, the plaintiffs said the rounding practice consistently reduced the number of hours employees were credited for and did not average out in a way that fully compensated workers.

“Defendant’s rounding practice did not average out so that employees were fully compensated for all time they actually worked,” the complaint reads. “Instead, Defendant’s rounding practice consistently and systematically operated to reduce the hours credited to employees, resulting in employees receiving less than the wages owed for their actual hours worked.”

The lawsuit also alleges employees were required to arrive early to put on hospital-provided scrubs and be stationed at their assigned units by their scheduled start times. Employees typically spent about 15 minutes per shift obtaining and changing into scrubs before finding a computer and clocking in, according to the complaint. The plaintiffs said in the suit the hospital did not pay employees for that time because workers were required to be fully dressed and on their units before clocking in.

The complaint argues that putting on the required scrubs was an essential part of employees’ work because they could not perform their patient care and surgical duties without them, and therefore they deserve to be compensated for this time.

“Defendant effectively required employees to perform integral and indispensable pre-shift work without compensation,” the complaint reads.

The lawsuit also alleges the hospital automatically deducted meal breaks from employees’ recorded hours even when workers were unable to take full, uninterrupted breaks because of heightened demand from their units. Employees who missed or took partial meal breaks were required to complete a handwritten form to reverse the automatic deduction, but the deductions often remained in place, the complaint alleges. 

The complaint says the hospital’s timekeeping system — Ultimate Kronos Group — could have allowed employees to report missed or interrupted meal breaks electronically, but instead the hospital still required them to complete a separate handwritten form. The plaintiffs argue the hospital failed to maintain a reasonable process for canceling automatic deductions because the hospital automatically deducted meal breaks despite having the capability to use an electronic reporting system, which resulted in employees not being paid for time they worked during meal periods.

The plaintiffs allege the hospital’s practices resulted in employees not receiving required overtime pay for hours worked beyond the 40 hours in a workweek. The complaint seeks unpaid wages, overtime compensation, liquidated damages, statutory penalties and attorneys’ fees, though the plaintiffs said in the suit the total amount of allegedly unpaid compensation is not yet known.

The lawsuit seeks to proceed as both a collective action under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act — allowing similarly situated employees at GW Hospital to join the case and pursue claims together — and a class action under D.C. wage laws, allowing employees with similar claims to be represented collectively in court. The groups in the proposed collective and class action would include employees who were required to put on scrubs before clocking in, had meal breaks deducted despite reporting that they did not take them or were paid for fewer hours than they clocked because of time rounding.

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