CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A Charleston-based nursing home and rehabilitation company with facilities in Monongalia, Preston, and Harrison counties will have to pay thousands of dollar in back wages to the U.S. Department of Labor, according to a settlement announced Thursday.
Stonerise Healthcare LLC will pay more than $61,000 in back wages. The agreement also said they’ll pay an equal amount in liquidated damages to nearly 500 healthcare employees at 16 facilities in West Virginia.
The agreement covers Stonerise facilities in Morgantown, Kingwood, Clarksburg, Bridgeport, Parkersburg, Belmont, Berkeley Springs, Keyser, Martinsburg, Charleston, Princeton, Beckley, Rainelle, Lindside, Ronceverte and Wellsburg.
The settlement resolves alleged overtime violations of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
According to the Department’s Wage and Hour Division, the company failed to include six types of bonus payments in employees’ regular rates of pay when calculating their overtime rates. The exclusion resulted in artificially lowered overtime rates that failed to reflect time-and-a-half of the true amounts employees had earned per hour.
“We are committed to ensuring that employees receive the wages they have rightfully earned,” said Wage and Hour District Director John DuMont, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. “We are also committed to ensuring that employers who fail to comply with the law do not gain an unfair competitive advantage over those who do.”