Bay Area residents might have personal experience with a home health care worker. These hard-working men and women help to ensure that a person who is elderly, ill or seriously injured can maintain a comfortable existence in his or her own home. These workers can look after health needs, and ensure that a patient has access to proper hygiene, healthy food and anything else that can provide some semblance of a normal existence to those who cannot care for themselves. It has recently been discovered that the home health care industry is wrought with wage and hour violations, making it difficult for these workers to complete the task at hand.
The Department of Labor began to investigate complaints that some of these essential workers were not being paid properly. After some diligent digging, it was discovered that many of these compassionate employees were not being paid fairly for overtime work. Others were completely misclassified, treated as independent contractors, even though they were employed by a parent company in the health care industry.
For individuals who provide such necessary care to struggling Americans, the implications of such mistreatment are shocking. Many of these employees may now be owed back wages. Some may even have to fix tax documents that unknowingly contained errors. The Labor Department is now filing lawsuits against such employers, in an attempt to remedy the wrong done to the employees.
If a Bay Area employee now suspects that he or she has been the victim of such a crime as wage and hour violations, he or she may want to seek legal justice in a court of law. The legal system may seem confusing. In many cases, however, the help of an experienced attorney can make a wronged employer feel that someone knowledgeable can help him or her speak up, and collect any back wages or other compensation to which he or she may be entitled by a court of law.
