D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine announced a lawsuit Thursday against Azure Healthcare Services LLC for allegedly failing to pay workers what they were owed during the height of the pandemic. The healthcare company owned and operated six group homes in D.C. for residents with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Azure and the company’s former owners, Beth Henson, who served as the company’s CEO, and Cynthia Warren, the president and COO, are named as defendants in the suit. Henson and Warren sold the company and stopped operating on June 1, 2021. Neither Warren or Henson could be reached for comment, and phone calls to phone numbers associated with both defendants were unsuccessful.
According to Racine’s lawsuit, early in the pandemic, Azure put their six facilities on lockdown, requiring staff to work in two-week continuous shifts – meaning they would not leave the facilities for 14 days. Employees were expected to be available and working 24 hours a day during that period. They would then have two weeks off, and each employee was required to test negative before returning for their two week shift.
Henson, according to the lawsuit, informed employees during a Zoom call that they’d only be paid for 18 of the 24 hours of each day of their two-week shift, but that they’d receive an additional $3 dollars per hour in hazard pay. However, Azure failed to pay the promised hazard pay, and did not pay adequate overtime hours (time and a half), as required by D.C. law....
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