US Department of Labor recovers $315K in overtime wages for 158 home care workers, after investigation finds Napa employer shortchanged them

AMERICAN CANYON, CA – A federal investigation has recovered $315,536 in back wages for 158 workers of American Canyon home care agency where the owner and CEO unlawfully required hourly employees who earned significant overtime to sign an agreement to be paid straight time for up to 160 hours per pay period.

A U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division investigation determined A Bright Future Inc. violated overtime requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act by failing to pay the affected workers for all hours worked in excess of 40 hours in a workweek and by paying straight time for all hours of work, including overtime. The division also cited A Bright Future’s owner and CEO Max Konan for requiring workers to defer their overtime wages, also an FLSA violation.

In addition, the home care agency violated federal recordkeeping provisions when they failed to count workers’ hours funded and paid by the State of California’s In-Home Supportive Services program as hours worked.

The investigation led to the division’s recovery of $315,536 in back wages for the workers who provide in-home care, day program and transportation services to people with disabilities.

“The services home care workers provide are vital to the people whose quality of life depends on them – people with disabilities and their families,” said Wage and Hour Division District Director Susana Blanco in San Jose, California. “Our investigation enabled us to help essential workers in an industry where our investigations find wage theft is all-too-common, and allowed us to put an average of nearly $2,000 into the pockets of each of the affected workers at A Bright Future Inc.”

Since 2017, the Wage and Hour Division completed more than 5,000 investigations of nursing care facilities, home health facilities, and child day care facilities. These investigations recovered more than $200 million dollars in back wages for employees.

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, including a search tool to use if you think you may be owed back wages collected by the division. Workers can call the Wage and Hour Division confidentially with questions – regardless of their immigration status – and the department can speak with callers in more than 200 languages.