Endeavor Health Lawsuit Over Wage Theft and Retaliation

Four nurses filed an Endeavor Health lawsuit over wage theft in August 2025, alleging the Illinois hospital system routinely required them to work unpaid before, during, and after their shifts, denied them promised pay for leadership and certification duties, and fired one plaintiff in retaliation for union organizing after a manager searched her personal cellphone.

Who Filed the Lawsuit and Where

The plaintiffs are Tricia Poreda, Juline Patlan, Karen Hernandez, and Jessica Balagtas. They sued Endeavor Health and Joyce Milewski, the system’s assistant vice president of employee relations, on August 15, 2025, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. The case is docketed as 1:25-cv-09768.¹ The Blake Horwitz Law Firm represents the nurses.²

What the Nurses Allege

The complaint invokes the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and Illinois wage laws. It says nurses were expected to arrive about 30 minutes before their scheduled start to review patient assignments and other materials, with no pay for that time. After shifts, they allegedly stayed up to two hours to finish charting and administer medications, again unpaid. Required 30-minute meal breaks were unpaid but routinely interrupted by patient needs, and the interrupted time was not compensated either.¹

The nurses also allege they were denied pay they had been promised for leadership duties and professional certifications.³

The Understaffing Argument

The complaint frames the unpaid hours as the predictable result of deliberate short-staffing. With fewer nurses on duty, according to the plaintiffs, the workload spills past scheduled hours and no one gets to leave on time.

The lawsuit points to a June 2025 incident at Evanston Hospital to argue that thin staffing carries safety consequences. A patient in crisis, Christian Haywood, shot a security officer in the emergency room. The nurses allege only one nurse was staffing the ER waiting area at the time because patient intake had been delayed during a stretch of short staffing.¹ Haywood was later charged with attempted first-degree murder and other felonies, and a Cook County judge ordered him held pending trial.⁴

Attorney Blake Horwitz put the theory of the case this way: “This case shows how profit-driven understaffing harms both nurses and patients.”³

The Phone Search and the Retaliation Claim

Plaintiff Jessica Balagtas brings separate claims for invasion of privacy and retaliation. According to the complaint, Balagtas was discussing unionization with coworkers on April 4, 2025, when Milewski grabbed her personal cellphone and searched her private text messages without consent. Endeavor then fired Balagtas based on what those texts contained, which she describes as retaliation for protected union activity. She is seeking compensatory and punitive damages against Endeavor Health and against Milewski personally.¹

Which Hospitals Are Covered and What the Nurses Want

The lawsuit concerns nurses at four legacy NorthShore hospitals now under the Endeavor Health umbrella: Evanston, Glenbrook, Highland Park, and Skokie. The plaintiffs are seeking back wages and have demanded a jury trial.¹

Endeavor Health’s Response

Endeavor declined to address specifics of the litigation. In a public statement, the system affirmed a “long-standing commitment to maintaining safe, supportive working environments and adhering to all applicable laws.”¹

The Union Fight Behind the Case

The wage-theft complaint sits inside a larger labor dispute at the same four hospitals. Nurses had been quietly organizing with Teamsters Local 743 for about a year before the campaign went public in the spring of 2026. Roughly 3,000 nurses are involved, and the union cites pay cuts ranging from $5 to $22 per hour, along with understaffing and unsafe conditions, as the drivers.⁵

In May 2026, two senior ICU nurses at Evanston Hospital were fired after handing out union information and gift bags to colleagues during National Nurses Week. Poreda, one of the wage-theft plaintiffs and a leader of the organizing drive, said the two wore union T-shirts over their scrubs with their employee badges visible and identified themselves to security on entry. Endeavor terminated them for “allegedly misrepresenting themselves.”⁶

Since March 2026, three unfair-labor-practice charges have been filed with the National Labor Relations Board against Endeavor, alleging retaliation, surveillance, and discipline aimed at workers engaged in protected organizing.⁷ Endeavor has said it reviews each employment action to ensure legal compliance and respects nurses’ federally protected right to choose union representation, while emphasizing the need for “consistent enforcement of our workplace policies.”⁸

On June 2, 2026, U.S. Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García sent a letter to Endeavor CEO Gerald “J.P.” Gallagher demanding the reinstatement of the two fired nurses and calling the system’s actions “illegal interference.” A week later, Teamsters members and Endeavor nurses rallied outside the system’s Evanston headquarters and delivered a reinstatement letter to Gallagher; Michele Wells, Endeavor’s vice president and deputy general counsel, accepted it outside the building. A petition supporting reinstatement had gathered about 1,000 signatures by then.⁹

1
Nurse.org. Nurses Sue Endeavor Health Wage Theft
2
Scribd. Nurses v. Endeavor Health, Case No. 1-25-Cv-09768
3
Crain’s Chicago Business. Nurses Sue Endeavor Health Over Understaffing Issues
4
Evanston Roundtable. Patient Charged With Attempted Murder in Hospital Shooting
5
WBEZ. Endeavor Health Nurses Look to Unionize Over Pay Cuts, Staffing Conditions
6
Evanston Roundtable. Endeavor Health Nurses Allege Union Supporters Were Fired Amid Organizing Effort
7
WBEZ. U.S. Congressman: Endeavor Health, Stop Retaliating Against Unionizing Nurses
8
Chicago Sun-Times. U.S. Congressman: Endeavor Health, Stop Retaliating Against Unionizing Nurses
9
Evanston Roundtable. Teamsters, Endeavor Nurses Demand Reinstatement of Fired Colleagues