Prestige Home Care Agency, owner failed to pay workers for work-related travel

PHILADELPHIA – A federal court has ordered a Philadelphia home care agency and its owner to pay more than $7 million in back wages and liquidated damages to 1,230 current and former employees after two years of litigation affirmed the U.S. Department of Labor’s finding that the employers willfully failed to pay overtime wages, in most cases by not including employees’ time for work-related travel when calculating wages.

On May 12, 2023, Judge Chad F. Kenney in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia found that Nursing Home Care Management Inc., operating as Prestige Home Care Agency, and its owner Alexander Dorfman owed $3,538,360 in back wages and an equal amount in liquidated damages to the affected employees.

The department’s Office of the Solicitor in Philadelphia litigated the case, brought after the department’s Wage and Hour Division determined the employers had violated the overtime and recordkeeping provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

The court found that Prestige Home Care Agency willfully did the following:

• Failed to pay the required overtime rate for hours over 40 in a workweek by not paying home health aides for time spent traveling between clients’ homes in the same workday and between Prestige’s administrative office and clients’ homes in the same workday.
• Paid certain employees straight-time hourly rates for all hours worked,...

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