An owner and operator of five residential care homes in central California has been accused of denying overtime pay to 42 caregivers and ordered to pay $545,655 in back pay and damages.
Founded in 2003, Santa Maria, CA-based Bauer Residential operates assisted living and adult residential care homes.
Investigators from the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division said that the company and its president, Mihaela Bauer, took “deliberate steps” to avoid paying the overtime rate of time and a half to employees who worked more than 40 in a workweek as required by the Fair Labor Standards Act. The department also said that Bauer made employees sign an agreement to forego the overtime rate in exchange for $1 more per hour over their regular pay.
“An employer cannot force an employee to give up their legally protected wages in any manner, including by signing a form,” Wage and Hour Division Assistant District Director Eduardo Huerta in Los Angeles said Thursday in a statement.
Investigators also said that the employer did not keep accurate records of employees’ hours worked and that the company created separate timesheets for some employees, resulting in additional recordkeeping violations.
In addition to the $545,655 in back wages and liquidated damages for the affected caregivers — whose payments in back wages and damages ranged from $124 to $22,477 — Bauer Residential also paid $24,402 in civil money penalties for the violations.
Bauer Residential had not responded to a request for comment by the production deadline.
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