Facility Workers Owed $1.6 Million: Labor Commissioner

Fresno, CA If you were owed $1.6 million, you might protest too. That’s the issue when a group of Filipino caregivers took to the street to make public their beef with the operators of an assisted living facility headquartered in Fresno. Their complaint and allegation is the non-payment of back wages and overtime that should have been their due under California labor law. Instead, the workers allege that Bedford Care Group (Bedford) of Fresno owes them $1.6 million.



And according to The Fresno Bee (1/23/14), the workers have the Office of the California Labor Commissioner in their corner. Last May, the Labor Commissioner cited Bedford for various violations to the California labor code. Among them, the failure to pay minimum wage and overtime, failure to issue itemized wage statements allowing employees to accurately track their hours and wages, and violations to mandated meal and rest breaks.

Bedford, which is identified as operating six assisted living facilities in and around Fresno and Clovis, has appealed the Labor Commissioner’s spring 2013 decision. At a hearing based at the Fresno office of the department of Fair Labor Standards and Enforcement, Bedford owner Stephanie Costa was expected to claim that Bedford possesses time sheets that show all employees had been paid according to California labor employment law.

However, an investigation by the Labor Commissioner found that Bedford owed 11 workers a total of $1.3 million in unpaid overtime during a period spanning November 2011 through April of last year. The Labor Commissioner also accused the employer of failure to pay $17,025 in minimum wage and $95,053 in premiums representing missed meal and rest breaks. Bedford was also cited for $114,500 in penalties.

Advocates say that while the Bedford case is not an isolated incident, it remains one of the more serious affronts, or so it is alleged, to California employee labor law.

The protest was staged on the eve of Bedford’s defense of its citation by the Office of the Labor Commissioner to Fair Labor Standards and Enforcement. The outcome of Bedford’s appeal is not known

At the protest, former employee Nerissa Roque told The Fresno Bee that she had toiled at Bedford for 14 months providing what she described as ’round-the-clock care to residents. “We love the people we take care of,” Roque was quoted as saying. “But we also need to be paid fairly.

“This is an injustice,” Roque continued. “We are very upset and sad and want the owner to pay us what we are owed,” according to California and labor law.