Today the Appeals Court affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by two school nurses in Somerset.
According to an agreement between the school committee and the teachers’ association, nurses Susan Bertrand and Tammi Lawrence were required to remain at their assigned schools during their daily 30-minute lunch breaks in case students needed emergency care.
This prompted a grievance complaint with the school committee. In the complaint, the teachers association, on behalf of the school nurses, demanded that the school committee pay the nurses for the 30-minute lunch breaks because they were not free to leave school grounds during that time.
The matter went to arbitration and the arbitrator ordered the school committee to
make [the] nurses whole for all those lunch periods during which the School Committee required them to remain in their assigned schools during their lunch periods…
According to the Appeals Courts
Neither party [i.e., the teachers association or the school committee] asked the arbitrator to address whether the nurses were paid for their lunch breaks.
Nevertheless, the school committee retroactively paid the nurses for all their 30 minute lunch breaks between 2018 and 2019.
The 30-minute hourly rate was based on the nurses’ six-hour-and-fifty-minute work day.
The nurses grumbled that the 30-minute hourly rate should be based on a six-hour-and-twenty-minute work day (i.e., the supposedly unpaid lunch period should not be considered as part of their work day.) This would result in a significant increase in the reparations they received.
The school committee refused and the matter went to court.
A superior court judge concluded that the nurses had in fact been compensated for their lunch breaks all along. They even received full payment for a 7 hour work day–ten minutes longer than they actually worked.
Accordingly the superior court judge dismissed the nurses’ lawsuit.
The nurses promptly appealed and the Appeals Court affirmed the judge’s decision:
The judge correctly concluded that the plaintiffs’ payroll records demonstrate the absence of a triable issue. Each of the two [collective bargaining agreements] in effect during this period defined the length of the school day as not exceeding six hours and fifty minutes. Although the plaintiffs allege that they were paid for only six hours and twenty minutes each school day, their payroll records show that, throughout the relevant period, they were consistently paid for seventy hours of work on a biweekly basis. That equates to seven hours per working day, ten minutes more than the required length of the school day according to the CBAs. This evidence established that the plaintiffs were paid for their lunch breaks, negating an essential element of their Wage Act claims. (Emphasis added.)
To read the full opinion, click the document below.