Indian-American employer ordered to pay $69K overtime
Darpan News Desk IANS, 10 Feb, 2023 12:56 PM
New York, Feb 10 (IANS) An Indian-origin owner and operator of three nursing homes in the US state of Michigan had to pay back $69,000 to managers who were not paid their overtime, according to a federal investigation.
Amee Patel owned and ran the operations at Chesaning Nursing Center and Detroit-based Beaconshire Nursing Center and Westwood Nursing Center.
The Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division recovered the whole amount in back wages and damages owed to 45 managers who worked at these three centers.
It found that Patel paid the managers hourly wages when they worked fewer than 40 hours in the workweek and paid salaried wages when they exceeded 40 hours.
By regularly alternating the managers' status from hourly to salary, Patel voided their claim that the managers were overtime exempt, the investigation found.
"Business operators cannot casually decide to pay workers as salaried in some weeks and hourly in others. By doing so, Amee Patel clearly violated federal laws by denying workers at her healthcare facilities all their hard-earned pay," Timolin Mitchell, Wage and Hour Division District Director in Detroit, said.
The division assessed and received payment of $7,938 in civil money penalties for Patel's repeat violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act.
In 2018, federal investigators found that Patel violated overtime regulations when she failed to pay drivers for all their travel and wait times.
In 2015, she failed to pay employees for attending mandatory trainings.
In total, the division recovered $17,173 in back wages for 12 Beaconshire Nursing Center employees, $14,205 in back wages for 21 employees at Westwood Nursing Center and $3,133 in back wages for 12 employees at Chesaning Nursing Center.
Patel also paid an equal amount in liquidated damages, for a total of $69,022.
In fiscal year 2022, the Detroit district office recovered nearly $2.2 million in back wages and liquidated damages for almost 3,000 workers in Eastern Michigan, of which nearly $500,000 was owed to healthcare workers.
According to Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO's technical lead on Covid, almost all of the up to 900,000 Covid cases sequenced worldwide over the last 60 days originated from the delta strain
It's also clear that people can infect animals. Pets such as cats, zoo animals such as gorillas and snow leopards and farmed mink can all be infected. Multiple cases have been reported, and evidence of changes in the viruses infecting mink have led to mass culls of those animals on fur farms, the report added.
6 teenagers were injured during a shooting incident at a park in Aurora in the US state of Colorado, police said. The shooting occurred at noon on Monday at Nome Park, which is near Aurora Central High School, Xinhua news agency quoted the Aurora Police Department as saying.
At least two students were killed and 10 others injured when a school van on Tuesday morning collided with a train while passing through an unmanned railway crossing in Sheikhupura city, Punjab province, reports Xinhua news agency
Further, the team found that Civets (Paguma larvata) carried the highest number of potentially high risk viruses. The cat-like carnivores have been known as potential reservoirs for coronavirus.
Two explosions occurred in the centre of Uganda's capital, where the Indian para-badminton team has gone to take part in an international tournament, but the shutters are safe. The blasts, which are reported to have occurred just 100 meters from the hotel the Indian team is staying in, have killed at least two people and set several cars on fire.
