PITTSBURGH – In return for providing essential homecare for people in need, 218 workers employed by a Pittsburgh-based home care agency expected their employer to pay them all their hard-earned wages. Instead, they found their employer denied them overtime wages, and manipulated records to hide the wage theft.
Following an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division in Pittsburgh, and litigation by the Regional Solicitor’s Office in Philadelphia, the department has obtained a consent judgment requiring that Everest Home Care LLC and owner Bhuwan Acharya pay more than $1.4 million in back wages and liquidated damages to the affected employees.
Investigators with the department’s Wage and Hour Division determined the employer paid workers a straight-time hourly rate instead of one-and-one-half their required rate for hours over 40 in a workweek. They also found the agency attempted to mask the wage theft by representing straight-time pay as overtime when overtime wages were required. Everest Home Care also failed to include recruitment commissions and hourly coronavirus hazard pay in employees’ required rates of pay when calculating overtime. All of these actions violate the Fair Labor Standards Act.
“Home healthcare workers provide vital services to people in need and their families,” said Principal Deputy Wage and Hour Division Administrator Jessica Looman. “The U.S. Department of Labor is committed to enforcing worker protections and holding...
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