Company accused of shorting home health aides to pay $450G

A company that employs home health aides engaged in "persistent and repeated illegality" by miscalculating overtime, paying aides for only about half of their 24-hour shifts and threatening immigrant workers who were in the country illegally with deportation for demanding back pay, the state attorney general’s office said Friday in settling the allegations.

The Brooklyn-based Allcare Homecare Inc., whose aides serve mostly Medicaid patients, agreed to pay $450,000 to close the investigation — a deal under which about 100 aides will get back pay and 13 of the immigrant aides will additionally get $8,000 each for emotional distress, Attorney General Letitia James said Friday.

“The health aides are among the many who spend tireless hours caring for New York’s aging and disabled population,” James said at a news conference about the settlement, signed in August by James’ office and Allcare vice president Dmitry Telnov.

There are about 200,000 aides across New York State, 60 percent of whom are immigrants, and 90 percent women, James said. She said the aides involved in the case are minimum-wage workers.

Her spokeswoman Morgan Rubin said some of the aides worked on Long Island.

Under the settlement Allcare did not admit liability, and the company’s outside attorney, Emina Poricanin, declined to comment on whether the allegations are true.

“The case is closed from our perspective, and the allegations are resolved,” Poricanin said, adding that she considered the resolution to be on “very good terms.”

James said her office was examining the conduct of other home health aide companies.

James said the threats to the immigrant workers were made after the aides were terminated following an internal audit that determined that some of the aides were not allowed to work under immigration law. Threatening an employee who complains about wage violations, as the settlement alleges happened in April 2017, is illegal under state and federal law.

Allcare did not follow through on its threat to report the 13 immigrant aides for deportation to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, and the aides remain in the United States, James said.

The investigation covered the company's conduct from October 2016 until last November, according to the settlement. It began after the aides complained, with the help of activists, to the attorney general’s office, she said.

Speaking through a Spanish translator, Silent Martinez, an aide originally from the Dominican Republic, lamented being paid only 13 hours despite working nearly 24 hours.

“The 24-hour workday is very difficult — and very grueling. 24-hour shifts affect our health and our families. We face abuse. We work four, five, six days a week — for years,” she said.

The aides were supposed to be granted breaks for sleep and meals but were not, James said.

Legislation introduced earlier this month in Albany would curb these 24-hour workday arrangements. Earlier this year, the state's highest court approved a state Department of Labor regulation allowing only 13 hours in a 24-hour workday, so long as an aide is granted breaks like eight hours for sleep and three hours for meals.

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.