SF Bay Area care home must pay $101K in back wages to 14 workers

Susana Blanco, Department of Labor Wage and Hour district director in San Francisco. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

SAN FRANCISCO – A care home with three assisted living facilities in Hayward, across the bay from here, must fork over $101,000 in back wages and damages to 14 caregivers for violating the fair labor law.

The Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division found that the three Escueta Care Home facilities at 1873 West Street, 1889 West Street and 23571 Ronald Lane, in Hayward violated the Fair Labor Standards Act.

The care home failed to pay time-and-one-half for hours worked beyond 40 hours in a workweek. Instead, Escueta Care Home paid the caregivers straight time for all their hours, in violation of the law.

Investigators from the Wage and Hour Division’s San Jose Area Office established that 14 caregivers working at the three different locations were owed $50,666 in unpaid overtime wages and an additional $50,666 in damages. Escueta Care Home has agreed to pay all the back wages due and the assessed damages.

“We continue to see widespread violations in an industry where unscrupulous employers are cheating their workers of their basic employment rights,” said Susana Blanco, the division’s district director in San Francisco.

These employees, who provide care to the most vulnerable, the elderly and the ill, deserve better. The Wage Hour Division will continue to assist both employers and employees and will not hesitate to enforce the workers’ rights to receive legally mandated compensation for all of the hours they work,” Blanco added.

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