Dive Brief:

• Petersen Health Care, Inc. of Peoria agreed to pay $2,939,576 in back pay to 3,024 caregivers at 84 facilities for allegedly violating the Fair Labor Standards Act, the U.S. Department of Labor announced May 24.
• The company manages residential nursing care facilities in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Missouri, according to the DOL announcement. Investigators for the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division found the company failed to pay wages for meal periods of less than 20 minutes and didn’t add bonuses and other incentive pay to the caregivers’ hourly rate when calculating overtime, the agency explained. As a result, Petersen Health Care “wrongly assumed the affected workers were not entitled to overtime pay,” the DOL said.
• Petersen Health Care doesn’t “agree with the Department’s claims or assumptions they made in determining their findings,” the company told HR Dive in an email. But “the current economic environment dictated the settlement,” it wrote. “Petersen Health Care pays, and has always paid, its employees fairly and equitably for all time worked,” the email said. “We regularly review and evaluate our pay practices to ensure our hard working employees are being compensated fairly and equitably for all the time spent caring for our seniors in need.”

Dive Insight:

The DOL has been aggressive about pursuing suspected overtime violations, and its investigations have led to hefty fines against employers. For example, the agency recently recovered $181,379 in back...

Read Full Story: https://www.hrdive.com/news/dol-nursing-care-chain-owes-break-time-bonus-pay/...