After scheming to deprive home care workers of their overtime wages, a Pittsburgh-area mother and daughter must pay $2.4 million.
In a bench trial, U.S. District Judge Christy Criswell Wiegand for the Western District of Pennsylvania found that Anna Zaydenberg and her daughter Marsha Simonds set up a second company with the same workforce as Squirrel Hill-based Elder Resource Management.
When employees worked more than 40 hours, their pay was split between Elder Resource and the second company, Staff Source. Thus, Zaydenberg and Simonds avoided paying workers overtime, even when employees worked 50 or 60 hours in the same week. Instead, workers received their lower hourly rate, with no overtime.
In her findings and conclusions, Judge Wiegand noted Zaydenberg loaned Simonds $100,000 to set up Staff Source and that the two companies used the same account with the timecard system Teletime, which did not distinguish between Elder Resource and Staff Source. The judge also cited that caregivers that received Staff Source paychecks only worked for Elder Resource clients.
Half of the $2.4 million in judgment is back pay to 345 employees who were denied overtime wages. The other half is liquidated damages. Zaydenberg and Simonds also have a nearly $435,000 civil penalty from the U.S. Department of Labor for violating the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Wage theft of low-pay home health and residential care workers is relatively common, according to Jenn Round of Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations. She says that’s why robust enforcement is important, “Bad actors need to understand that the consequences for violating the law are severe. This will help to improve conditions in this industry and better ensure that employers adhere to the legal floor.”
Simonds and Zaydenberg’s attorneys did not respond to requests for comment.
