The New York State Department of Labor announced two settlements following investigations into a Queens employer underpaying home health aides. The cases resulted in settlements totaling $44,000 for two home care workers who were denied adequate sleep time during 24-hour shifts and underpaid for hours worked. NYSDOL’s Division of Worker Protection has opened 1,587 home health industry investigations since July 2015, dispersing nearly $10.3 million in wages and damages to 14,878 claimants through 610 cases.
“Home health aides are essential to our medical infrastructure,” said New York State Department of Labor Commissioner Roberta Reardon. “In order for them to stay healthy and provide the best possible care to patients, we must ensure they have proper sleep and meal breaks and compensate them for any interruptions to those breaks.”
Both claimants were employed by Caring Home Care of Ozone Park, based in Queens. It was determined that from February 2021 to October 2021, the employees were not properly paid for shifts where they did not receive adequate sleep and meal breaks.
Under state law, home health aides are paid for 13 hours of each 24-hour shift, so long as they are provided eight hours of sleep, five of which are uninterrupted and three uninterrupted meal breaks. NYSDOL encourages home health care employers to review their policies and practices to ensure full compliance with the law.
Over the past decade, NYSDOL has recovered and dispersed more than $360 million in owed wages and identified over a million misclassified workers. The Department is also the lead agency in Governor Hochul’s Wage Theft Task Force, a collaborative interagency effort to crack down on wage theft. Victims are encouraged to file a wage complaint and can email labor.sm.ls.ask@labor.
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