The U.S. Department of Labor has obtained a consent judgment requiring a Wyncote home healthcare agency and its owner, Dominique Conner, to pay 196 direct care employees a total of $810,320 in back wages and liquidated damages for routinely not paying workers overtime rates and willfully violating federal law.
The consent judgment, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, follows an investigation by the department’s Wage and Hour Division that found Wyncote Wellness LLC routinely violated the minimum wage and overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act.
The investigation revealed that Wyncote Wellness regularly failed to pay employees the required overtime rate and instead paid employees, who had multiple clients, with separate checks for each client they worked with each week. Instead of combining hours worked in a week to calculate overtime rates, Wyncote Wellness paid overtime after employees worked for more than 40 hours with each client. Additionally, the department found that employees frequently recorded more hours than they were paid by the employer and were not compensated for travel time between clients. The employer also failed to preserve records of hours worked, including travel time between clients when employees worked with multiple clients in a day.
“Home healthcare workers provide vital services to the most vulnerable members of our communities, and their work deserves respect and fair compensation,” said Wage and Hour Division District Director James Cain in Philadelphia. “This enforcement action will help to ensure workers are paid their total earnings and remind other employers of their obligations under the law.”
In addition to back wages and liquidated damages, the consent judgment requires Wyncote Wellness to pay a civil money penalty the department assessed for the willfulness of the violations.
“Our efforts resulted in securing the consent judgment and recovering hard-earned wages for the home health workers. This case demonstrates the U.S. Department of Labor’s commitment to pursuing litigation when employers fail to comply with the law,” said Regional Solicitor Samantha Thomas, in Philadelphia.
The division’s Philadelphia District Office conducted the investigation and the department’s Office of the Solicitor in Philadelphia filed the complaint and consent judgment.
The FLSA requires that most employees in the U.S. be paid at least the federal minimum wage for all hours worked and overtime pay at not less than time and one-half their regular rate of pay for all hours worked over 40 in a workweek.