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An employee is suing Valley Children’s Healthcare for wage theft, accusing the Madera County nonprofit of intentionally paying nurses less than the minimum wage for their “mandatory on-call shifts.”
Bonnie Ferreria, who the complaint says is a four-year employee of Valley Children’s, filed a lawsuit in Madera County last week on behalf of herself and all other possibly-affected employees who have worked for the nonprofit since June 2020.
“At a time when too many pay lip service to our nurses, this lawsuit is about delivering basic rights for the most important people in our Valley: Those who take care of sick children and help lift up Valley families in the midst of a medical crisis,” Ferreria’s attorney, Brian Whelan, said in a statement sent to The Fresno Bee.
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In an email statement sent to The Bee on Thursday, Valley Children’s denied all the allegations in the lawsuit and said it will defend itself against the claims in the litigation.
“To date, there has been no judicial finding of merit to any of the claims nor on the appropriateness of class action treatment,” the hospital said. “Because the litigation is ongoing, the hospital cannot comment further at this time.”
Valley Children’s has been under fire since March, when it was revealed that its top-paid executives received multi-million-dollar compensation packages in recent years. Nonprofit federal tax filings show CEO Todd Suntrapak received a total annual compensation of more than $5 million in 2021 and 2022, plus a $5 million forgivable loan in 2022 to purchase a home. That year, only two other CEOs of the nation’s largest children’s hospitals with more beds than Valley Children’s received more annual compensation.
The CEO’s compensation is decided by the Valley Children’s Healthcare Board of Trustees. News reports in March showed that the board directed an external consultant to offer a compensation structure that put Suntrapak in the top 10% of earners in the industry. The hospital later said that Suntrapak’s 2022 compensation figure was the result of a one-time accounting adjustment that gave him two bonuses in one year.
According to Ferreria’s complaint, Valley Children’s policy is to pay its non-exempt employees, including its nurses, “less than the minimum wage for their mandatory on-call shifts.” Non-exempt employees are those who are entitled to at least the minimum wage and also entitled to overtime compensation.
“The on-call shifts paid between $6.00 dollars an hour to $8.00 dollars an hour when the employee was on-call but not called back to be physically at work in the hospital,” the complaint states.
The complaint also alleges Valley Children’s failed to pay employees when their compensation was due, failed to accurately calculate and provide overtime pay, and failed to provide workers with accurate wage statements, among other accusations. The lawsuit says Valley Children’s does this “intentionally, knowingly, and systematically.”
Ferreria is the only plaintiff named in the lawsuit.
In recent months, Suntrapak and Michael Hanson, chairman of Valley Children’s board, have repeatedly declined interviews with The Bee, through hospital spokesperson Zara Arboleda, about executive compensation at the hospital. The CEO spoke out publicly — for the first time since criticism of his pay began — in an interview with ABC30 that aired Tuesday.
“Nursing wages, in particular, are very fluid,” Suntrapak told ABC30. “We recently made an adjustment to our nursing salaries that puts our nursing salaries on par with anybody else in the area.”
The CEO also said during the interview that he has heard more people say they continue to trust Valley Children’s than say the opposite. The nonprofit recently announced that it received a $15 million gift from an anonymous donor to fund cancer treatment – a gesture one Valley Children’s doctor said shows continued trust in the hospital.
News of Suntrapak’s compensation brought scrutiny from Fresno City Councilmembers Miguel Arias and Garry Bredefeld, who both called for a state investigation in March into the hospital’s financial structure.
In an email to The Bee on Thursday, Bredefeld reiterated his criticism of Valley Children’s executive pay and perks, calling the CEO compensation package “not justifiable.”
“They don’t pay their nurses fair wages and children who needed certain cancer or live-saving kidney treatments had to go to Stanford to get the care they needed until a donor recently gave the hospital a $15 million dollar donation,” Bredefeld wrote. “Not one child should ever have to wait for any treatment or be denied treatment when they have that much money at their disposal.”
In light of the allegations in the nurse wages lawsuit, Fresno City Attorney Andrew Janz said this week that his office will be investigating the matter.
“The City Attorney’s Office has jurisdiction over any hospital offices and facilities located in the City of Fresno,” Janz said in a statement. “No further comment will be provided as our investigation is ongoing.
“If it is later determined after our investigation we don’t have jurisdiction, we can still forward the case to the state labor commissioner for prosecution.”
Valley Children’s runs clinics and other facilities throughout the Central Valley, several of them in Fresno.
