More than 200 workers employed by a Pittsburgh-based home care firm anticipated their employer to pay them what they’d earned for going above and beyond for nearly two years. Instead, they discovered that their employer had denied them extra pay and had falsified documents to conceal wage theft.
Following litigation by the Regional Solicitor’s Office in Philadelphia based on an inquiry led by the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division in Pittsburgh, a consent judgment was obtained requiring Everest Home Care LLC and owner Bhuwan Acharya to pay more than $1.4 million in back wages and liquidated damages to its affected employees.
The employer’s violations and ‘wage theft’
Everest Home Care LLC provides personal assistance, home- and community-based services, and long-term living assistance. In addition to its Pittsburgh headquarters, the company operates a second location in Erie, PA.
According to the employees’ complaint before the court, they alleged that “from July 2018 until February 2020, the employer failed to compensate certain employees employed as direct care workers or caregivers who worked over 40 hours in a workweek hour at rates not less than one and one-half times their regular rates.”
“During this time period, the employees worked at least one hour in excess of forty per workweek. Many employees worked in excess of fifty hours per workweek during the relevant period,” it added.
The employees maintained that the employer “manipulated employees’ regular...
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