Dive Transient:
- A bunch of Seattle-area grownup residence care suppliers paid greater than $1 million in again wages, liquidated damages and civil cash penalties after U.S. Division of Labor investigations discovered that the employers didn’t pay some employees full wages, DOL mentioned in a Dec. 6 press launch.
- In all, DOL reached administrative settlements with six employers in instances involving 77 care employees. The employers paid employees every day flat charges whatever the hours they labored, DOL mentioned, main some to be paid lower than the federal minimal wage and denied extra time pay.
- Individually, the employers didn’t preserve required data, based on DOL. The company mentioned that one Lakewood, Washington-based facility failed to take care of a file of hours labored and didn’t calculate wages on a workweek foundation.
Dive Perception:
Underneath the Biden administration, DOL has honed in on care business employers’ wage-and-hour violations. Since 2008, the company has recovered thousands and thousands in again pay yearly; in its 2021 fiscal yr, DOL’s Wage and Hour Division recovered greater than $13.8 million in again wages owed to greater than 17,000 workers.
Tuesday’s information comes simply weeks after one other high-dollar restoration for the division in Texas and Louisiana, the place a gaggle of 4 residence healthcare companies had been discovered to have violated the Truthful Labor Requirements Act’s extra time pay provisions.
“Since 2021, we’ve discovered violations in 80 p.c of the greater than 1,600 investigations we’ve accomplished within the care business,” Thomas Silva, WHD’s district director for Seattle, mentioned in an announcement. “These probes have recovered greater than $28.6 million in again wages and damages for 25,000 employees, and led to just about $1.3 million in penalties for employers.”
Final summer season, DOL officers addressed the problem of care business wage and hour compliance in a webinar. The presentation lined a wide range of work eventualities that will result in bother for employers, akin to pre-shift working time, relaxation intervals and meal breaks.
For instance, lined workers who take a meal break of half-hour or extra usually don’t have to be compensated for that meal interval. But when the worker is often interrupted by sufferers who request help through the course of the break, the employer could must compensate the worker in that situation.
