Rhode Island’s second-largest hospital will pay $1.9 million in back wages and damages to 853 health care workers under a settlement announced Friday by the U.S. Department of Labor.

The administrative settlement resolves a claim that during the pandemic, Warwick’s Kent Hospital made employees work through their breaks but did not pay them adequately for the extra hours.

“The Wage and Hour Division is eager to return the $1.9 million in wages and liquidated damages we recovered to the workers who put their needs second and delivered essential care to the many people in Rhode Island who suffered during the pandemic,” Jessica Looman, the Labor Department’s wage and hour administrator, said in a statement issued Friday. “An administrative resolution like this allows affected workers to collect their hard-earned wages promptly.”

The Wage and Hour Division’s of the Labor Department’s district office in Hartford, Connecticut, handled the case, which spans the period from July 30, 2019, through Dec. 31, 2022. Investigators found hospital employees in the emergency room and other departments who worked more than 40 hours a week but were not paid appropriately when they worked through their breaks. Overworked staff who labored during their 30-minutes off nonetheless had the breaks deducted from their paid time, according to the Labor Department’s findings.  

Kent Hospital’s parent company, the Care New England Health System, is responsible for paying the $100,000 in civil penalties levied by the Labor Department. Care New England has also agreed to comply with the Fair Labor Standards Act as part of the settlement, and has reorganized its timekeeping system to ensure adherence.    

Raina C. Smith, a spokesperson for Care New England, wrote in an email Friday that the hospital “is fully committed to ensuring that our employees receive a meal break or payment if they work through the break.” 

“Our past policy required an employee to notify their manager if they worked through the break, and for the hospital to then manually add the meal break time back into the payroll system,” Smith said. “In 2023, we automated the process to ensure that every meal break is appropriately recorded. Employees now personally verify each day at the time clocks whether they took a meal break or should instead receive payment for that time. This information is automatically entered into the payroll system.”

Alexander Castro covers education, health and technology for Rhode Island Current. He has worked extensively in the visual arts as a critic, curator and adjunct professor. Rhode Island Current is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.