While you may be compensating your live-ins and relievers with hourly and overtime pay, provide them with their own living quarters, provide an appropriate workweek schedule and use a timesheet, they are still regarded as 24-hour workers without an appropriate employment agreement. This can potentially lead to hundreds of thousands of dollars in owed back wages, liquidated damages, and penalties in the face of an audit or class-action lawsuit because you are not able to legally deduct both sleep time and other off-duty time.
Having the appropriate employment agreement between you and your caregiver, allows you to legally classify them as live-ins or relievers based on a work schedule criteria and a work environment criteria, thereby allowing you to take advantage of deductions of both sleep time and other off-duty time.
To help care home owners comply with complex state and federal labor laws, 6Beds has co-authored with Littler Mendelson Law Firm, The Wage and Hour Guide for Residential Care Facilities (The Guide). The first and only one of its kind, The Guide outlines both federal and state laws that pertain to employing and compensating live-in caregivers and their respective relievers. Most importantly, it contains employment agreements for both live-ins and their relievers, a sample timesheet for documenting hours worked, and also comprehensively covers the work schedule criteria and work environment criteria that must be met in order for your employees to be properly classified as live-in employees.
Join us on August 18th in Buena Park (SoCal) for 6Beds’ 2017 ARF and RCFE Annual Conference, where an attorney from Littler Mendelson Law Firm will provide an overview of the labor laws pertinent to our industry and how to comply by using The Guide. Representatives from DOL will also be present to answer your pertinent questions.
