What’s the worst that could happen if I go after my intern program 5 years later for owed wages during orientation + interest after I have finished my advanced residency and become board certified?
Probably that the statute of limitations has expired, and have a nice day.
We've had this exact same discussion on this same website before, but I am not 100% sure if it's true.
I believe, after quite a bit of work, that you're correct, for a very interesting reason. Physicians are clearly "exempt" employees per the FLSA. Exempt doesn't mean that they are exempt from the law, but that they are exempt from the rules regarding minimum wage, overtime, and hours tracking that regular hourly workers are held to. The FLSA says that work orientations usually have to be paid (there are some funky exceptions, but they are not applicable here). So, I thought that resident orientation would need to be paid.
Googling "FLSA Exempt employee paid orientation" or lots of other combinations of terms didn't help -- all sites just talked about hourly employees.
But then I found this:
Business | Boeing Must Pay Employees For Orientation, Judge Rules | Seattle Times Newspaper
Class action case from 1995, where a boatload of employees sued Boeing for back pay for orientation time. And they won. But, the courts decided that the employer could choose a different rate of pay for orientation if they wanted to. So Boeing paid everyone minimum wage for their orientation time -- making it a Pyrrhic victory.
But wait, it gets better. Because remember that physicians are "exempt". And hence are exempt from minimum wage laws. Thus, the courts decided that exempt employees can be "paid" for orientation at a rate of zero. In the original lawsuit, 80% of the class were exempt professionals, and got zero.
So, unless there is contradictory case law since, orientation doesn't need to be paid. Or, to be more precise, must be paid but a rate of $0/hr is acceptable.
That said, I'm not a lawyer, and free legal advice is worth what you paid for it.
