Jul. 13—Thirty-six employees of a West Lebanon home health care business will share a total of $950,000 in back pay and damages for unpaid overtime after an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor.
The back wages awarded in a settlement represent the time-and-a-half pay that was due to employees who worked for Your Comfort Zone Inc. in New Hampshire and Vermont between April 2020 and August 2022. The company has a history of unlawful pay practices, according to the Labor Department.
So far, Your Comfort Zone has paid $36,324 in civil penalties for violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which requires most employees in the U.S. to be paid at least the federal minimum wage for hours up to 40 per week, and time and a half for any overtime.
The business and its president and owner, Rosalind Godfrey, also will pay $50,000 in punitive damages as a result of a federal court order July 5. That's for a related case involving retaliation by Your Comfort Zone against its employees.
These are not the company's first violations, according to the Labor Department. After two investigations in 2018, the department's wage and hour division recovered more than $100,000 in overtime owed to 25 Your Comfort Zone employees. The division later learned that the employer allegedly coerced some affected workers into kicking back the money.
The order issued last week in the U.S. District Court in Concord also prohibits the company or its owner from retaliating, seeking kickbacks or taking or threatening adverse action against current or former employees who asserted their rights under federal labor law.
"Your Comfort Zone's repeated shortchanging of its employees is egregious and illegal and deprives people who provide valuable and necessary care in our communities of the hard-earned overtime wages they need to support themselves and their families," said Steven McKinney, district director for the Labor Department's wage and hour division in Manchester, in a statement this week. "We will use every enforcement tool we have to recover workers' wages and bring serial violators like these into compliance."
"The resolution of this case serves as notice to employers that retaliation and wage theft will not be tolerated by the U.S. Department of Labor," said Regional Solicitor of Labor Maia Fisher in Boston.
Ted Fitzgerald, a public affairs director and spokesperson for the department's wage and hour division, said it doesn't have the authority to stop a violator from doing business. He said the division cannot comment on whether other New Hampshire home care companies are under investigation for similar violations.