Class-action lawsuit claims UnityPoint Health shortchanged hourly workers

A potential class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of employees of UnityPoint Health alleges the hospital chain has violated wage-and-hour laws by rounding down workers’ actual hours.

Plaintiffs Jennifer Randolph and Maggie McMahon, on behalf of themselves and other UnityPoint hourly workers, are suing Iowa Health System, which does business as UnityPoint Health, under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

UnityPoint Health operates 18 regional medical centers and 17 community-network hospitals in Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin. The company says it employs roughly 29,000 people and generates annual revenue of more than $4.7 billion.

The lawsuit, while focused on Illinois workers and violations of both federal and Illinois state labor laws, was filed this week in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa, where UnityPoint Health is based.

Court records indicate Randolph is a registered nurse who worked for UnityPoint for roughly 16 years at locations in Bettendorf, Rock Island, Ill., and Moline, Ill. McMahon worked for UnityPoint’s Rock Island location from June 2006 through March 2024.

The lawsuit alleges that during the past 10 years, UnityPoint has used a company named Kronos, later renamed UKG, for timekeeping services related to hourly employees.

That timekeeping service, the lawsuit claims, was configured in a manner that rounds off the actual time employees clock in and clock out.  For example, the lawsuit asserts, if a worker is scheduled to begin work at 9 a.m., and clocks in between 8:53 a.m. and 9 a.m., the individual is not credited for the additional minutes of work time. The same is allegedly true of employees who work up to seven minutes past the end of their shift.

UnityPoint, the lawsuit alleges, “systematically rounds time off both ends of its hourly employees’ work shift to the advantage of (the company) and to the financial harm and underpayment of its hourly employees.”

The aggregate sum of unpaid wages for all of the affected employees “is substantial on a daily, weekly, and annual basis,” the lawsuit claims, particularly because UnityPoint employs thousands of hourly employees.

The lawsuit seeks court approval of class-action status, as well as a judgment in the amount of all back wages due UnityPoint workers, plus statutory damages and attorneys’ fees. The lead attorney for the plaintiffs in the case is Nate Boulton of the Des Moines law firm of Hedberg & Boulton, a former Iowa state senator.

While UnityPoint has not yet filed an answer to the pending lawsuit, it did file and answer to the same set of allegations made by the same plaintiffs in April 2026 when the case was first initiated in Illinois Central District Court.

In that case, which was dropped once the Iowa case was filed, UnityPoint specifically denied rounding off workers’ actual hours and also denied paying its hourly employees based on rounded time rather than actual hours worked.