Nate Willems served in the Iowa House from 2009 through 2012 and practices law with the Rush & Nicholson firm in Cedar Rapids. This essay previously appeared in the Prairie Progressive.
In August 2019, I filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of several current and former employees of University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. We claimed UIHC was violating Iowa law by holding on to certain wage payments for too long before paying. As UIHC had a common payroll practice, we sought to certify a class action. Eventually, the U.S. District Court authorized the class action, and we took on representation of 11,000 current and former UIHC workers.
There was never any allegation UIHC entirely refused to pay workers. However, Iowa law requires a regular payday be within twelve days after the end of the period in which the wages were earned. For as long as anyone could remember, overtime, supplemental pay, pay for shifts that went long, and other types of premium pay were paid one month late.
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