PROVIDENCE – Three Rhode Island nursing care facilities operated by Centers for Care LLC, a Bronx, N.Y.-based company have paid $192,622 in back wages and liquidated damages to 89 employees, the U.S. Department of Labor announced Thursday.
The backpay and damages were paid to resolve violations of the overtime and minimum wage provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act by the company, which does business as Centers Health Care.
The three facilities are:
- Park View Operations Associates LLC, doing business as Park View Center for Rehabilitation & HealthCare, in Providence
- Bannister Center for Rehabilitation & Healthcare LLC, doing business as Bannister Center for Rehabilitation & Healthcare, in Providence
- Shady Acres Operations Associates LLC, doing business as Kingston Center for Rehabilitation, in South Kingstown
The three facilities were also made to pay $68,796 in civil penalties.
“The Wage and Hour Division will conduct investigations and rigorously address violations to ensure employees are paid what they have earned, and that employers compete on a level playing field,” said DOL Wage and Hour Division District Director David Gerrain. “We encourage all employers to make use of the many tools we provide to explain their responsibilities so that costly violations like those found in this investigation can be avoided.”
The DOL found that the company only paid workers for scheduled hours, not paying workers for unscheduled hours of work, failed to total weekly hours for workers that worked across multiple facilities of Centers for Care, paying workers standard rates for hours that should have been overtime pay hours.
The company also failed to include shift differentials in employees’ regular rates of pay when computing overtime. The DOL noted that the company failed to pay employees for all hours worked due to erroneous rounding practices.
All Rhode Island care facilities also failed to hang the Fair Labor and Standards Act poster is required by federal law.
The DOL said that the company has agreed to enforce the FLSA at all of its roughly 50 facilities nationwide.
