Washington, DCOn July 25, the U.S. Department of Labor filed a lawsuit on behalf of 25 home healthcare workers employed by Getch, Inc. and its owner Gregory B. Getchell. The unpaid wages lawsuit seeks to recover $75,101 in overtime pay and to enjoin the employer from a pattern repeated violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
Similar lawsuits are filed throughout the country on a regular basis, highlighting the fact that people who work in their employers’ homes are often isolated and vulnerable to wage theft. Walsh v. Getch, Inc. is not a case of inadvertent individual failure, however. The scheme perpetrated by Getch, Inc. was systemic law breaking.
Investigators from the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division found that Getch violated the FLSA by paying a flat daily rate to workers who provided seniors with live-in assistance for daily living activities. The employees worked both day shifts and live-in shifts at clients’ homes. For live-in shifts, they were compensated for 16 hours a day, excluding an eight-hour sleep period. Getch paid employees working live-in shifts different hourly rates depending upon the number of hours worked in a workweek. The more hours an employee worked over 40 in a workweek, the lower the hourly rate the employee would receive. They were paid only a flat daily rate for live-in shifts, with no overtime premium, as required by law.
Then, to create the...
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