Delaware County home care company owes over $1 million for failing to pay workers overtime
Caring Hearts Health Care Services agreed to pay 159 workers back wages and damages as part of a consent judgment reached with the Department of Labor.
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A Delaware County home care business failed to pay 159 workers overtime, according to an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor. The company was ordered to pay over $1 million in back wages, damages, and penalties, according to a consent judgment.
Caring Hearts Health Care Services LLC, which has clients in Philadelphia and Delaware Counties, paid employees the same rate for overtime and regular hours and failed to properly record hours employees worked, the DOL investigation found.
“The Wage and Hour Division’s emphasis on rooting out wage theft in the home care industry has found yet another employer taking advantage of workers who provide vital services to people in need,” James Cain, the division district director in Philadelphia, said in a statement. “The hardworking people in this industry deserve respect and fair compensation.”
The home care employer provides meal arrangement, medication management, and medical disability support to patients who are unable to travel to appointments, according to the DOL. It is a family-owned business which operates out of Sharon Hill, according to the company website.
The company will pay $956,589 in back wages and damages to employees for violations that allegedly occurred between Sept. 13, 2020, and Sept. 17, 2023, according to court documents. The money owed to employees ranges from $48 to $90,687.78, according to the spokesperson for the DOL. The company will also pay a $97,459.20 civil fine.
The company could not immediately be reached for comment.
The Philadelphia region has seen several overtime wage violations in the home health-care industry in recent years. Between January 2021 and March 2022, the DOL found that 35 home health-care companies in Southeastern Pennsylvania violated federal labor laws in large part by not paying overtime or minimum wage, the Philadelphia DOL office found. A core part of the problem is that Medicaid doesn’t pay agencies extra for overtime in Pennsylvania, The Inquirer reported in 2022. The number of workers in the home health-care industry has also not kept pace with the growing demand, in part due to low wages, The Inquirer reported last year.
More recently, in January, a home health-care business based in Northeast Philadelphia was ordered to pay over $1.64 million in back wages to workers after not properly paying its employees overtime rates, and last year, a Willow Grove-based company was ordered to pay its home health-care workers that were denied overtime payment $3.86 million in back pay and damages.