PEORIA, Ill. – The feds say a Peoria-based health care company must pay almost $3 million in back pay to more than 3,000 employees in four states that are owed in overtime.
The Department of Labor says in a news release Petersen Health Care was found to have failed to pay the correct overtime to the workers in Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri.
The feds say Petersen wrongly assumed the workers were not entitled to overtime pay — failing to pay for meal breaks shorter than 20 minutes, not adding bonuses and other incentives when calculating overtime pay, and not maintaining accurate work hour records.
“While residential healthcare workers at Petersen Health Care Inc. provided around-the-clock, daily living assistance and delivered essential care to people in need, they were subject to pay practices that underreported their hours of work and denied them the pay they were legally due.” said Jessica Looman, DOL Acting Wage and Hour Division Administrator, in a news release. “The U.S. Department of Labor will ensure that workers who commit themselves to caring for others will receive the wages they earned so they can also take care of themselves and their families.”
The Labor Department says company CEO Mark Petersen signed an agreement to comply with the Fair Labor Standards Act in the future.
Petersen reportedly had to pay $42,000 in 2009 after it was found then to have violated the Fair Labor Standards Act. They say in the last six years, the department’s Wage and Hour Division also determined Petersen needed to pay $88,000 in seven investigations across several other locations.
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