The US Department of Labor (DOL) announced that nearly 400 home healthcare workers will receive the wages they are owed after the DOL obtained a consent judgment ordering a Philadelphia-area agency and its owners to pay them more than $2.3 million. A federal investigation found the employer willfully shortchanged employees’ hard-earned overtime wages. Following an investigation by the department’s Wage and Hour Division and litigation by its Office of the Solicitor, the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania entered a judgment on Jan. 24, 2023, requiring Affectionate Home Health Care Services LLC in Lansdowne and owners Ashford B. Sonii and Habibatu K. Dumbar to pay $1,176,883 in back wages and an equal amount in liquidated damages to 398 home healthcare workers.
Division investigators determined the company, operating as Affectionate Home Health Care, paid straight time for overtime hours worked, paid an arbitrary rate less than the time-and-a-half overtime rate required by law for hours over 40 in a workweek or used a combination of the two illegal pay practices. They also found the employer did not separate straight-time hours worked from overtime hours and failed to record the proper hourly rates in overtime work weeks accurately. These actions violated the overtime and recordkeeping provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act. In addition to paying back wages and damages, Affectionate Home Health Care Services LLC must also pay a $219,099 civil money penalty assessed by the division for the willful nature of the violations.
