A federal investigation has recovered $211,064 in back wages and liquidated damages for 16 people employed by the owners and operators of three Bay Area assisted living facilities that deliberately failed to pay the required overtime rate when employees worked over 40 hours a week serving the needs of older adults in Santa Clara and San Jose. Investigators from the US Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division found Pruneridge Enterprise Inc. and its owners, Leilani F. Cortes and Geoffrey L. Cortes, did not pay overtime to the affected workers at three locations the employers operate as Pruneridge Residential Care Home. On average, the affected workers at these facilities worked as many as 50 hours per week. The division also learned the employers paid six caregivers below minimum wage and did not keep accurate payroll records. These actions violated the overtime, minimum wage, and recordkeeping provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act. In addition to the recovery of $105,532 in unpaid wages — and an equal amount in liquidated damages — the division assessed Pruneridge Enterprise Inc. and its owners with $12,336 in civil money penalties for the repeated and willful nature of the employers’ violations. In 2011, three investigations found similar wage violations at facilities operated by the employers.
