Legal Question in Employment Law in Washington

Re: WA Employer refuses to pay unscheduled overtime.

Your employer is required to pay you for the time that you work, if you are paid hourly. It is correct that you cannot leave a patient stranded on a toilet to end your shift, and I imagine the hospital would be quite unhappy with you if you did so. In this case, your employer is the agency, and that is who you need to be asking for the additional pay.

It is unclear from the facts that you have given whether you are entitled to overtime (that is, pay at 1 1/2 times your rate of pay) or regular pay for the additional hours worked. You are only entitled to overtime if you work more than 40 hours per week. For example, if you worked an 8 hour shift four days a week and worked an extra 30 minutes on each shift, you did not exceed 40 hours for that week, so they would owe you for two hours at your regular rate, not at the overtime rate. Conversely, if you work five eight hour shifts and then work an additional four hours on the sixth day, they would owe you four hours overtime, even though you did not exceed eight hours on any day.

(For the benefit of salaried employees who might be reading this answer, salaried employees must also be paid overtime for any hours over 40 worked in a week, unless they are exempt.)

If the agency declines to pay you, you can get help from the Department of Labor and Industries.

On the other hand, you should also do whatever you can to end your shift on time. Alert your supervisor when it appears that you are about to get caught up in a task that will run past the end of the shift. Try to time things so that you are free to go when the time comes. (Yes, I know there is more work to be done. There will always be things still to be done.) The reason is, your employer can not legally decline to pay you for unauthorized time worked. However, your employer can legally terminate your employment for this. Depending on the circumstances, you might be able to argue that it was retaliation for exercising your statutory rights, but that could be an expensive battle to fight, and depending on the facts of your case, the outcome could be in the employer's favor.