A federal lawsuit filed this week seeks class action status on claims Guthrie did not pay hourly employees what it should
SAYRE, Pa. — A Bradford County-based health system made its hourly employees work during unpaid lunch breaks, rounded off their time sheets and left out bonus pay from overtime calculations, a former employee alleged in a federal lawsuit Tuesday.
Jessica Waters, of Tioga County, New York, wants a federal judge to order Guthrie Health Clinic to pay the wages she said were held back during her roughly two years at Guthrie Robert Packer Hospital in Sayre.
She also wants Chief Judge Matthew W. Brann, of the Middle District of Pennsylvania, to certify the lawsuit as a class action so Guthrie’s other hourly employees can join.
“Waters and the other hourly employees perform their jobs under Guthrie’s supervision, policies, and procedures and use materials, equipment, and technology Guthrie approves and supplies,” the attorneys wrote. “But Guthrie does not pay Waters and the other hourly employees at their agreed rates for all hours worked.”
Guthrie has not yet replied in court to the suit’s allegations. Newswatch 16 has not heard back from a Guthrie spokesperson by Wednesday evening.
Guthrie is a Sayre-based healthcare nonprofit that operates 77 regional offices, six hospitals and services 1½ million patients each year in 29 communities in Pennsylvania and New York, the heath system said online.
“Guthrie’s commitment to its core values of patient centeredness, teamwork and excellence—the defining values upon which Guthrie Clinic was founded— remains robust and unchanging,” according to its website.
Waters worked at the Sayre hospital from November 2023 to December 2025 as a care partner and unit clerk, according to the lawsuit. That means her job included assisting nurses with patients by taking vitals, drawing blood, answering phones, helping finish charts and preparing patients for transfer.
In June 2025, Waters was among one of three caregivers the hospital honored with the Mabel Lamberson Nursing Excellence Award for “outstanding work in nursing practice, leadership, and support,” according to Guthrie’s annual nursing report.
However, Waters said this week in federal court that she and others she worked with were not properly paid.
They were “required” to work through their 30-minute unpaid meal breaks because of a lack of available coverage, the suit said. Guthrie “simply assumes” the employees took breaks and automatically deducted the breaks from their wages. Regular interruptions, however, kept the employees working.
Waters said she and others also were subjected to a “rounding policy” that saw their clock-ins and clock-outs rounded to the nearest quarter-hour for Guthrie’s benefit. That results in a net underpayment of wages, she alleged.
Guthrie also was accused by Waters of underpaying her overtime. She said the healthcare system would not factor in her $5,000 sign-on bonus when calculating overtime. That was despite state and federal labor laws requiring overtime based on all renumeration, her attorney said.
Along with seeking certification as a class action, the suit seeks damages from Guthrie for allegedly violating the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act and the Pennsylvania Wage Payment and Collection Law.