Philadelphia nonprofit home-care firm forced to pay $2.1 million in back wages for overtime

The U.S. Department of Labor recovered $2.1 million in back wages for 475 employees of a Philadelphia home-care company, Good Family Support Services Inc., the agency’s Wage and Hour Division said Thursday.

Good Family, registered as a nonprofit with an address in Germantown, failed to pay overtime for the workers from Jan. 12, 2019, through April 3, 2020, federal officials said.

The recovery works out to an average of $4,661 per worker. Good Family has 1,284 employees in 2019, according to its 990 tax form.

“Home health care workers provide essential services and have remained on the front lines, taking care of our loved ones and keeping us moving forward,” M. Patricia Smith, senior counselor to the Secretary of Labor, said. “These employees deserve to be paid every cent they have earned.”

Officials at the labor department said they had no data to comment on whether failure to pay overtime had become more of a problem during the coronavirus pandemic.

Good Family officials did not respond to a request for comment.

The organization’s 2018 tax form says Good Family’s president, Rex Barr Jr., was paid $234,000 that year. The 2019 return listed zero for his salary that year.

Good Family, founded in 2012, has had explosive annual revenue growth, from $1 million in 2015 to $19.8 million in 2019.

Good Family has only three directors, two of them related. Its 2019 990 showed a profit of $5.2 million. It also had $6.1 million in the bank, and $5.2 million in investments.