Hospitals Can’t Ax Wage Collective OK’d Under Stricter Standard

Two hospital parent companies can’t attempt to undo an employee wage collective because their workers had to clear a higher hurdle to win group status in the first place, a US judge has ruled.

The workers landed collective status for their wage-and-hour case under the more stringent standard after an unrelated appellate ruling pointed out that the Fair Labor Standards Act doesn’t mention conditional certification, Judge Susie Morgan said on Sept. 6. Acadia LaPlace Holdings LLC and Ochsner-Acadia LLC moved to decertify the collective, but “also conspicuously absent” from the law’s text “is the word ‘decertification,’” the US District Court ...