Ascension St. Joseph Joliet nurses file lawsuit, claiming wage theft to tune of thousands
JOLIET, Ill. (CBS) -- Dozens of nurses at a Joliet hospital claim they've been stiffed thousands of dollars by their employer.
They say the problems so bad they had to file a federal lawsuit to try to finally get their money.
CBS 2 Investigator Megan Hickey has been digging into the massive issue of wage theft in Illinois for months. Her investigations have uncovered that wage theft is a huge problem in Illinois - And workers who go to the lengths of filing a claim are still owed tens of millions of dollars.
So some workers take another route – including the nurses in Joliet - by taking their employers to court.
Amanda Woolcock works overnights as a psychiatric nurse at Ascension St. Joseph Medical Center Joliet.
"Not to sound too cliché, but I felt like it was a calling," said Amanda Woolcock, nurse at Ascension St. Joseph.
Woolcock has done two stints at St. Joseph in Joliet — for a total of 12 years. She worked long, hard hours through the height of the COVID pandemic and was due for a raise in July, but the money wasn't showing up in her paycheck.
"Then I contacted HR," Woolcock said.
But she says that ever since then, she has been getting the runaround - and still, no raise as she was owed.
"Especially with the cost of living going up," she said.
But then, Woolcock discovered it wasn't just her. Dozens of her colleagues said they noticed they were shorted on incentive pay - or had issues with their paid time off.
"People don't understand how big of a problem wage theft is," said attorney Will Bloom.
Bloom is now representing Woolcock, three other named plaintiffs, and dozens of other unnamed nurses in a federal wage theft complaint against Ascension Health - which owns the hospital.
"I think Americans are understanding that more and more," Bloom said. "I think we're seeing a greater sense of working people understanding themselves as being exploited by their bosses."
After months of hoping the hospital system would resolve the pay issues, a group of the nurses informally served the president of the hospital with the lawsuit on Thursday. It was officially filed Wednesday.
"We didn't want it to go this far," Woolcock said, "but we're at that point where nothings been done for months – nine months. And it's not just me – it's a bunch of nurses."
And it was even more hospital staff that she thought. It turned out that Ascension was the subject of a scathing New York Times investigation into its hospitals nationwide for allegedly trying to shrink labor costs as much as possible in the years leading up to the pandemic — and putting that money into executives' pockets.
"In the last several years, the phrase 'essential worker' has kind of gotten life of its own," Bloom said. "These workers are absolutely essential, and management has not treated them that way."
Ascension strongly denied the allegations. Their full statement is at this link.
We asked for a response to this week's lawsuit, but St. Joseph Joliet hadn't returned our phone calls or emails as of late Friday.
Meanwhile, Woolcock says nurses continue to leave.
"To see ones who have been there for 20-some-odd years leave to go find better-paying and more sustainable jobs - it's heartbreaking," Woolcock said. "We want to provide excellent care to the community, but we have to have the resources."
In response to the bigger picture investigation into Ascension's staffing, the health care system said, in part, "Any allegation that Ascension's current workforce challenges relate to workforce decisions made in years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic is fundamentally misguided, misleading, and demonstrates a lack of understanding of the impact of COVID-19 on the health care workforce."