Nurses in four cities have filed class-action lawsuits accusing hospitals of conspiring to keep nurses' wages at artificially low levels, the New York Times reports.
The lawsuits allege that hospitals in Chicago, Memphis, San Antonio, and Albany violated antitrust law by engaging in a wage-fixing conspiracy that the lawsuits say included an agreement to share detailed information on pay and avoid competing against one another in setting compensation.
Baptist Memorial Health Care Corporation in Memphis, one of the hospitals the nurses sued, tells the newspaper that the lawsuit lacks merit.
"It's important for our employees and our community to know this is completely without merit," says Echelle Lane Rutschman, a spokesperson for the Baptist Memorial Health Care Corporation. "We use industry-standard, legal practices to adjust salaries. Our salaries are market-based, and we use many methods to determine fair, competitive, compensation packages."
The nurses' lawyers claim nurses on average were underpaid about $6,000 per year in Albany, about $5,000 in Chicago, about $1,300 in San Antonio, and about $14,000 in Memphis.
The newspaper notes that the Service Employees International Union provided the nurses' attorneys with some of the information that led to the lawsuits.
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