VDA OC: The Rival Employer Was in on the Pay Freeze

In the VDA OC wage fixing case, the healthcare staffing company admitted in its guilty plea that it agreed with a competitor to divide nurses between them and fix their wages. Those nurses cared for medically fragile students in Nevada’s Clark County School District. The criminal indictment describes the part a nurse asking for a raise could not see from the pay stub: the other employer had already agreed to close off the alternative.

VDA OC had operated as Advantage On Call, supplying contract health care personnel through a Las Vegas office. The Justice Department’s plea announcement dates the conspiracy from about October 2016 until July 2017. The Department of Justice announced its guilty plea on October 27, 2022. The indictment shows how that agreement allegedly reached recruiting decisions and a nurse’s request for more pay.

Two Staffing Firms Behind a School Nurse’s Job

The criminal indictment identifies VDA and its competitor as the two primary providers of contract nurses to the school district. Both secured district nursing contracts in 2013. The companies employed nurses and assigned them to facilities that bought their services. They competed for customers and also competed to attract, hire and retain the nurses needed to serve those customers.

The school district had sought specialized nursing care for students with complex medical needs. Its contract called for constant care through classroom time, hallways, bus rides, meals, field trips and other school activities. These were nurses accompanying students through the school day, performing the health procedures that made that possible.

The school district contracted for care. The staffing companies hired and paid the nurses providing it. An agreement between those companies about whom to recruit or what to pay could reach the nurse through an ordinary hiring conversation or wage decision.

The indictment also identifies the people who controlled those decisions by their jobs. VDA’s regional manager handled nurse hiring and developed staffing customers. The rival company’s account manager handled nurse recruitment and staffing for its clients. The alleged agreement sat with the managers whose daily work was to find nurses and fill assignments.

The indictment also explains the company’s two names: Advantage On Call changed its name on file with Ohio to VDA OC in or around July 2017.

The Wage Freeze and the Hiring Ban Worked Together

The indictment charged that the staffing firms agreed to no nurse wage increases and stopped recruiting or hiring each other’s nurses assigned to the district. These were the two parts of the antitrust scheme: holding down pay and closing off a competing employer.

According to the indictment, VDA’s regional manager emailed the rival account manager to confirm that his company would not recruit the rival’s active district nurses. The response accepted the arrangement:

The message treated employees’ ability to seek better work as a threat to the managers’ control of their businesses. Cooperation between the employers meant less bargaining room for the nurses.

The indictment alleged another term that made the arrangement particularly restrictive. If a nurse assigned to the district sought work with the other company, that company would immediately notify the nurse’s employer and would not discuss employment with the nurse. The restriction reached a nurse who took the initiative to apply, as well as one a recruiter might otherwise approach.

The pay side was just as explicit. In the same email, according to the indictment, VDA’s regional manager wrote:

The nurses were trusted to care for medically fragile children. Their employers agreed to deny them both a raise and the chance to negotiate one with the rival staffing firm.

A Raise Request Met the Agreement

The indictment then connects the employer agreement to an actual pay decision. It alleged that the rival account manager instructed a subordinate to reject a nurse’s request for a pay increase, referring directly to the arrangement with Advantage On Call.

The manager tied the refusal to the other staffing firm in these words: “plus Advantage On-Call and us have a deal not to poach nurses.”

A nurse saw a refused raise. The manager’s message supplied the reason.

The indictment also alleged that the firms refrained from recruiting or hiring each other’s district nurses and that certain employees at the rival company received instructions to follow the restriction. The alleged arrangement had moved from a discussion between managers into the work of the staffing office.

What the Payroll Adds to the Emails

The government’s sentencing memorandum put wages paid to the affected nurses at $218,016. The emails describe the deal between managers. The payroll shows the wages it reached.

We connect the pay, the assignments and the messages with the insider who understands how the staffing office worked.

The VDA example is especially useful because the raise-request message itself referred to the rival agreement. Someone handling the request could know why the raise was refused even without having taken part in the original conversation. Different people in the office may see different parts of the same decision.

A Recruiter’s Instructions Can Expose the Deal

The Knorr-Bremse and Wabtec allegations show how an employer’s agreement can become a recruiter-stop instruction or a requirement to get a rival’s hiring approval.

An employer’s agreement with a rival can thus surface in a rejected candidate, a stopped recruiting effort or a demand for permission from the candidate’s current employer. In VDA’s criminal indictment, the equivalent instruction was to notify the other staffing firm and refuse the employment discussion.

For a recruiter, the useful knowledge may be the reason a promising candidate was suddenly off limits. For an account manager, it may be who demanded that restriction and how it was passed down. Those operational details connect the agreement to the job opportunity it removed.

Can a Wage-Fixing Whistleblower Get a Reward?

Our whistleblower experts assess your information for an antitrust whistleblower reward and work through the program’s requirements with you.

Medicaid funding was part of the school district’s payments for VDA’s nursing services. The government’s criminal sentencing memorandum identifies that funding, and the indictment traces payments from the district to the staffing firms and from the firms to their nurses.

For an insider who also knows about false claims for government payment, our review follows that additional evidence: what the contract required, what the company represented and what the government paid. The False Claims Act addresses knowingly false claims and material false statements.

A whistleblower case under the False Claims Act can pay 15% to 30% of what the government recovers.

If your concern includes confidentiality, your own role in the arrangement or how to bring the evidence forward, those are matters to work through with our whistleblower experts.

You Know Why the Raise Was Refused

Tell our whistleblower experts how the agreement between staffing firms reached a nurse’s raise request or application to the rival employer.