Nursing assistants, live-in caretakers, and others who work in the home healthcare field provide crucial and necessary services to thousands of people across the state of Ohio. Unfortunately, many people who work in this industry are significantly underpaid for their important work, including those who are illegally denied compensation for hours spent on the job.
Home healthcare aide wage violations can be fought in court, but it usually takes help from a qualified wage and hour lawyer to effectively pursue a positive case result.
Everyone deserves to be paid a fair wage for the services they provide and those who provide healthcare to home-bound patients are certainly no exception. Unfortunately, wage violations are far too common among home healthcare aides in Ohio, adding up to millions of dollars in lost compensation each year.
If you had your wages stolen, hours falsified, or experienced any other wage violation, professional legal help is available. Call today to speak with legal counsel about your unique case and what you could do to pursue the compensation you deserve.
Failure to Pay for Overtime Hours
According to Ohio Revised Code §4111.03, every hourly employee who works more than 40 hours in a single week must be compensated at a rate of one and a half times their normal hourly wage for each extra hour worked. The provisions of this statute are the same as those set out in the federal Fair Labor Standards Act regarding overtime compensation for hourly workers.
Unfortunately, many home healthcare aides and workers are not appropriately compensated for overtime work in accordance with these regulations. Even as they continue to provide around-the-clock care to patients in need, their employers may continue to pay them at their normal hourly rate when they should be paying them at the overtime rate. Employers might also falsify or keep inaccurate records regarding total hours worked.
These practices are illegal and can be grounds for a lawsuit against an employer for back pay, attorney’s fees, and other damages. Any Ohio home healthcare aide who loses out on compensation due to overtime wage violations should consider speaking with legal counsel about the options available to them.
Failure to Reimburse Travel Time
Many home healthcare workers must care for multiple patients each day, meaning they must travel between different homes as part of their daily schedule. Under a fair compensation framework, the time a home healthcare aide spends traveling from one patient to another should be considered part of their workday and it should be compensated accordingly.
However, some home healthcare employers in Ohio do not count this kind of travel as work time, meaning they unfairly underpay their employees for hours spent on the job. Fortunately, recent legal precedent has shown that employers can be held liable for this kind of wage violation.
In August 2019, two Ohio home healthcare providers were forced to pay almost $200,000 in back pay and compensation to their workers for, among other violations, failing to appropriately compensate them for travel time on the job. Any home healthcare worker who suspects they have been victimized by this kind of wage violation should be able to take action along similar lines.
