Home Health & Hospice Week

A New Orleans-area home care agency and its owner must pay up in a wage case.

Parishes Supportive Living Inc. and owner Belinda Vining-Trepagnier have been ordered to pay 80 workers a total of $630,000 in back wages and damages after the employer misclassified them as independent contractors, the Department of Labor says in a release. Parishes “willfully failed to pay overtime wages for hours over 40 in a workweek, as required by law,” the DOL says.

The agency and owner must also “retain an independent third-party auditor to review the company’s payroll and pay practices for a three-year period and prepare status reports on the employer’s ongoing FLSA compliance,” the release adds.

The DOL offers aides a new app to check their “hours and pay are accurate” at www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/timesheet-app, the agency adds.