The owner of eight residential care facilities in Modesto will pay $135,092 in back wages to 56 employees and $27,872 in civil penalties after the US Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division found widespread violations of minimum wage and overtime requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The division assessed civil penalties due to the repeat nature of the violations. Investigators found Golden Age Home Care and its owners paid caregivers flat rates per day, regardless of the number of hours they worked per day or per week. By doing so, the employer violated federal minimum wage requirements when those rates failed to cover all the hours employees worked at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. Overtime violations occurred when employees worked more than 40 hours in a workweek, but the employer failed to pay them overtime in addition to their day rates. Employer time records failed to capture interruptions to workers’ sleep time, and hours worked by employees taking required training that Golden Age failed to pay for. Golden Age also failed to keep accurate records of employees’ personal information, weekly hours worked and weekly amounts paid. The employer also failed to display the FLSA poster, as required.
