Pittsylvania County health care services provider pays $139K in back wages after US Labor Department investigation finds overtime violations

DANVILLE, VA – Most home health care workers put in long hours and earn low wages as they meet the needs of parents, grandparents, elderly friends and the chronically ill. For dozens of employees of a Danville home health care company shortchanged on their overtime wages, making ends meet gets even harder.                                                                        

A recent investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division has recovered $139,974 in back wages for 58 employees of Prince Charles Home Health Care Agency LLC, which operates in the Pittsylvania County area as Prince Home Health Care. The employer was also assessed a $30,319 civil penalty for the willful nature of the violations.

The division found that the employer violated the Fair Labor Standards Act by failing to pay employees overtime when they worked more than 40 hours in a workweek. Instead, the employer recorded any overtime hours on a separate payroll, paid workers for those hours at their straight time rates, and falsely labeled those payments as reimbursements. The employer’s failure to record the actual number of hours employees worked, and the falsification of records violated FLSA recordkeeping requirements.

“Employers who willfully violate the Fair Labor Standards Act will be held accountable by the U.S. Department of Labor,” said Wage and Hour District Director Roberto Melendez, in Richmond. “Paying for overtime hours at straight-time rates, and creating schemes in an attempt to conceal those practices, violates the law, deprives workers of their hard-earned wages, and puts competitors at an unfair disadvantage.”

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). Information is also available at www.dol.gov/agencies/whd, including a search tool to use if you think you may be owed back wages collected by the division