INDIANAPOLIS — The U.S. Department of Labor is alleging that the owner and chief financial officer of two Indianapolis home care companies shortchanged employees of overtime wages.
This comes after March was cited in 2018 for not paying overtime wages to employees at Aging and Disabled Home Healthcare in Indiana.
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The complaint alleges that March and Stanley shortchanged their employees $86,427 in overtime wages from March 2020 through March 2022. Overtime wages are 1.5 times a worker’s regular rates for hours worked in excess of 40 in a workweek.
The department alleges the two specifically avoided the overtime requirement by:
- Setting an “artificially low” hourly rate of pay and paying overtime hours at 1.5 times the rate to “make it appear they were paying the overtime premiums for hours worked over 40 in a workweek.”
- Mislabeling wages as “purported discretionary ‘bonuses,’”
- Separated hours worked by employees for Signal Health Group and SHG Employee Leasing for the purposes of calculating overtime. This caused the employees to not pay overtime wages for employees who worked more than 40 hours total across both companies.
- Failed to compensate employees for hours worked while traveling between job sites during the workday.