TAMPA, FL – Home healthcare aides are among the nation’s lowest wage earners. Many depend on receiving every dollar they’ve earned, including overtime wages, so when their employer fails to comply with federal labor laws and shorts their pay, it hits their wallets particularly hard.
A U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division investigation of All Support Services LLC, a Tampa-area home healthcare provider, found that the employer failed to pay workers overtime when they worked more than 40 hours in a workweek, instead paying workers at straight time rates for all the hours that they worked. The employer also failed to pay workers for time spent traveling between clients’ homes, or for some of the time they spent on duty while their clients slept.
The division cited All Support Services for these violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act and has recovered $45,770 in back wages for 38 workers.
“The Fair Labor Standards Act is very clear when it comes to employers’ obligations to their workers and their employees’ rights to receive earned wages for all the hours they work,” said Wage and Hour Division District Director Nicolas Ratmiroff in Tampa, Florida. “Failing to pay workers as the law requires is illegal, and especially unacceptable amid a pandemic when these workers put their own safety at risk to serve the needs of our communities’ most vulnerable citizens.”
Based in Tampa, All Support Services LLC provides supported living coaches, supported employment, personal support, in-home companions and personal live-in support services to area residents.
For more information about the FLSA and other laws enforced by the division, contact the agency’s toll-free helpline at 866-4US-WAGE (487-9243). Learn more about the Wage and Hour Division, and use its search tool if you think you may be owed back wages collected by the division.