US Department of Labor recovers $327K in back wages for 223 employees of Ohio-based health care services provider

DELAWARE, OH – Creative Foundations Inc. has paid $327,848 in back wages to 223 employees after the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division found the Delaware-based employer violated the Fair Labor Standards Act’s overtime and child labor requirements. The department assessed $671 in civil money penalties for the employer’s child labor violations.

Investigators determined the employer violated the FLSA’s overtime requirements when it paid some employees flat salaries regardless of the number of hours they worked each week. By doing so, the employer failed to pay overtime to those employees when they worked more than 40 hours in a workweek.

Investigators found Creative Foundations further violated overtime requirements when they failed to pay health care employees for time they spent traveling between clients’ locations during the workday. The employer also failed to include employee bonuses in their calculation when determining workers’ overtime rates. This exclusion resulted in Creative Foundations paying overtime at rates lower than those required by law. Additionally, the employer failed to total hours employees worked at different rates of pay within the workweek when determining when overtime was due.  

In addition to the wage violations, investigators determined the employer violated the FLSA’s child labor requirements by employing a minor under age 16 during school hours, for more than 3 hours on a school day, and for more than 18 hours during a school week.

“Health care workers who provide dignity and care to vulnerable clients deserve to be paid all of their hard-earned wages,” said Wage and Hour District Director George Victory in Columbus, Ohio. “Employers are responsible for understanding and complying with federal labor laws. We encourage them to contact us for guidance and to use the compliance assistance tools and information we offer.”

Creative Foundations operates five adult day care service locations for individuals with developmental disabilities and four branch office locations providing home health care services in Ohio.

The Wage and Hour Division offers numerous resources to ensure employers have the tools they need to understand their responsibilities and to comply with federal law, such as online videos, and confidential calls to local division offices. For more information on federal wage and child labor laws, visit http://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd or call the division’s toll-free helpline at 866-4US-WAGE (487-9243).