A Philadelphia home healthcare agency was fined $414,351 for denying sixty-two members of staff overtime.
The Department of Labor’s Office of the Solicitor filed the action in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania against QualiT Healthcare and the company’s owner Teajan Kamara.
The investigation’s findings suggest that Kamara deliberately failed to pay employees their legally earned overtime wages.
QualiT Healthcare fined for denying employee overtime
The judgment confirmed a Wage and Hour Division investigation that QualiT Healthcare LLC owed the affected workers “$414,351 in back wages and liquidated damages for violating overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act.”
The court also ordered QualiT Healthcare and Kamara to pay a $5,649 civil penalty for the willful nature of the violations.
“The judgment we obtained will put significant amounts of money back in the pockets of hard-working care workers,” said Regional Solicitor Samantha Thomas in Philadelphia. “This case underscores the U.S. Department of Labor’s commitment to pursuing litigation when employers fail to comply with the law.”
QualiT Healthcare has paid the affected workers $198,591 in back wages and $9,341 in liquidated damages. The remaining balance of $212,067 in back wages and liquidated damages must be cleared to avoid further action by the Wage and Hour Division and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
“Care workers provide essential services to people in need in our communities and they deserve to be paid all of their earned wages,” said Wage and Hour Division District Director James Cain in Philadelphia. “Enforcement actions against employers like QualiT Healthcare help to ensure workers are paid as the law requires and remind other employers of the importance of compliance.”
Due has reported on the crackdown on healthcare companies avoiding fair pay. Two United States healthcare staffing companies have recently been instructed to repay employees $2.4 million in back wages.
The companies are based in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania and specialize in recruiting workers for the healthcare sector.
The court action was entered in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts against Gate Solution Systems Inc. of Malden, Massachusetts, and Healthcare Services Group Inc. of Bensalem, Pennsylvania.
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