Home Health & Hospice Week

The crackdown on overtime pay violations continues.

Case #1: The U.S. Department of Labor has recovered nearly $138,000 in back wages and damages from a Lubbock, Texas home care provider. Lubbock Essential Home Health Care Inc., operating as Essential Home Health, “paid 71 workers — most working as health aides — straight time for all hours worked instead of time and one-half the employees’ hourly rate of pay, as the law requires in this case,” the DOL Wage and Hour Division says in a release. That included $68,919 in back pay and an equal amount in liquidated damages.

“Home health workers are essential healthcare workers who perform vital care for people in need and often work long hours,” says Wage and Hour District Director Evelyn Ortiz in the release. “These workers must be paid time-and-a-half for hours worked over 40,” Ortiz emphasized.

Case #2: WHD recovered about $432,000 in back wages and damages from an Indianapolis home health agency owner. Timothy Paul, owner of both Heal at Home LLC and TPS Caregiving LLC — operating as Comfort Keepers — “assigned home healthcare workers to shifts at two related companies but failed to combine the hours, denying them earned overtime pay when they worked more than 40 hours per week for the same employer,” WHD says in a release. Paul agreed to pay $215,859 in overtime back wages and an additional $216,938 in liquidated damages and interest to 171 workers, according to the release.

“When an employer assigns workers to multiple facilities they must combine all hours worked and pay earned overtime. By failing to do so, they deny workers the wages they have rightfully earned,” Wage and Hour District Director Patricia Lewis says in a release. “Employers have an obligation to compensate these workers all their hard-earned wages.”