Assisted Living — On-Call Hours Go Unrecorded, Time Shaved

San Antonio Assisted Living — On-Call Hours Go Unrecorded, Time Systematically Shaved

Sagora Senior Living, Inc. d/b/a Adante Senior Living | Hourly Employees | San Antonio, Texas

Buenker Law filed a federal lawsuit against Sagora Senior Living, Inc. on behalf of hourly workers at its Adante Senior Living facility in San Antonio who were denied pay for all of their compensable work time. The case involves two separate violations operating simultaneously. First, every other week, employees were required to carry the facility’s on-call phone and respond to all after-hours and weekend issues — yet they were explicitly instructed not to record any of that on-call time on their timesheets. Second, Sagora maintained a company-wide policy of systematically deducting time from hourly employees’ daily records, reducing the hours recorded below the hours actually worked.

Under the FLSA, time spent on call is compensable when an employee is required to remain available for work under conditions that are sufficiently restrictive to prevent the employee from using that time effectively for personal purposes. Being required to carry and respond to a facility phone for all after-hours issues — including medical emergencies, staffing problems, and resident concerns — is a textbook example of compensable on-call duty. When those hours tip total weekly time over 40, overtime pay is owed. The added deductions to the time records made an already bad situation worse.

The lawsuit was filed as a collective action on behalf of all hourly non-exempt employees at Sagora’s San Antonio location who worked more than 40 hours in any week but were not compensated for all of their off-the-clock work during the three-year period prior to filing. The case is pending in federal court in San Antonio.