ASE UPDATE: On February 22, 2023, Feldman Legal Group won certification of a national collective action for therapists of Reliant Rehab in FLSA overtime wage case.
In Haggerty v. Reliant Pro Rehab d/b/a Reliant Rehab, the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts granted an order of nationwide collective action to proceed against Reliant Rehab for all therapists working for the company in the past 3 years up through to the date of the trial.
See the Court Order.
DETAILS ABOUT RELIANT PRO REHAB’S FAILURE TO PAY OWED OVERTIME WAGES
CASE: Kristen Kendall, individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated, v. Reliant Pro Rehab LLC, d/b/a Reliant Rehab, violation of Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) overtime wage laws.
Through this lawsuit, we are alleging that the Reliant companies did not follow the FLSA and did not pay earned overtime wages to affected employees since at least April 2019.
In an effort to avoid paying overtime wages, we believe Reliant Pro Rehab and Reliant Rehab purposefully encouraged and forced employees to work “off the clock,” meaning they were expected to finish their assigned work, no matter how long it took, without reporting working more than 40 hours. Any employees who reported working overtime hours would receive disciplinary actions, including fear of termination. Under the FLSA definition, Reliant should not force employees to work off the clock to deny them receiving overtime pay.
Some of the job titles at Reliant Pro Rehab and Reliant Rehab where regional managers and directors of rehab expected employees to work off the clock and to not expect overtime pay included:
Therapist
Therapy Assistant
Physical Therapist (PT)
Occupational Therapist (OT)
Physical Therapy Assistant (PTA)
Certified Occupational Therapy Assistant (COTA)
Speech Language Pathologist (SLP)
Those with similar other job titles at Reliant may also be eligible to join the lawsuit. This case will involve current employees in these jobs as well as past employees.
To learn more about this case, click here.
Representing Victims of Unfair FLSA Practices
At Feldman Legal Group, we frequently represent employees as plaintiffs in cases involving FLSA collective actions regarding non-payment of overtime. Some of the employees we represented in past cases, as well as in currently pending cases, worked at companies including Cogent Communications, NinjaOne and NinjaRMM, Fleetcor Technologies, Select Rehabilitation, Strada Services, Verizon Connect, Verizon Connect Fleet, Total Insurance Brokers, Accenture, Managed Labor Solutions, Partsbase, Knight Enterprises, and others in similar FLSA collective actions.
Because of the practices of these companies, we believe that employees did not receive the overtime wages they earned. According to the federal FLSA and state wage laws, any non-exempt employees should receive a premium in wages for hours they work beyond the standard 40-hour work week.
Companies try to work around these overtime payment requirements by misrepresenting the responsibilities or titles of the employees or by outright forcing employees not to report overtime hours. Through our work on this case, we believe the Reliant companies are purposefully requiring employees to work off the clock.
Reliant Rehab’s Violations of the FLSA
At Feldman Legal Group, we would like to discuss with present and past employees of Reliant Rehab and Reliant Pro Rehab LLC the company’s unfair overtime payment practices. Please contact us to discuss your situation.
Through our investigation, we believe that the Reliant companies did not give credit for overtime to its employees who:
Worked through all or part of the 30-minute lunch break time
Worked hours before the official start of the workday
Worked hours after the official end of the workday
Worked weekend hours.
We are alleging that Reliant frequently expected and encouraged the employees to work hours beyond the 40-hour week without recording these hours as overtime. The company’s unwritten and de facto policy of no overtime hours allowed, while expecting the employees to hit unreasonable productivity requirements, left employees with no choice but to work off the clock to complete the expected level of work.
Our Investigation
While investigating the case involving our representative plaintiff, we learned that many Reliant therapists worked through the lunch break for one or multiple days a week. The company expected the employees to report on a timecard that they actually did not work during this break, going so far as to change a timecard to reflect a 30-minute break taken, even if the employee reported working during the break. Employees also worked before and after the normal work hours, but the company did not allow them to report these as hours worked because of the company’s unwritten policy banning overtime hours.
The company expected our representative plaintiff and others to hit productivity requirements, attend mandatory meetings, and complete mandatory treatment notes, regardless of whether these required tasks would require more than 40 hours in any week. In the majority of weeks, our representative plaintiff had to work multiple hours off the clock to meet the requirements.
We learned that the company knew employees were working off the clock, yet chose to require employees to not report these extra hours, because they would result in overtime pay. When our representative plaintiff asked about reporting the extra hours as overtime, the company threatened disciplinary action and termination. Yet, the company also threatened disciplinary action and termination if employees failed to meet their productivity requirements.
We are demanding the Reliant companies to now pay for these extra hours that the employees worked, or that the company knew or should have known that the employees worked, at 1.5 times the regular rate of pay, as required under FLSA.
Get Help from Our Attorneys If You Believe You Weren’t Paid for Overtime
If you also worked under these conditions, our team would like to speak with you. We would like to gather more information on Reliant’s practices regarding denying overtime pay.
Please contact us for a 10- or 15-minute phone call about your experiences with the Reliant companies and about your beliefs regarding any FLSA violations the company performed. You are under no obligation to join the lawsuit or to work with us after this telephone call.
HAVE YOU WORKED AS A THERAPIST AT RELIANT PRO REHAB LLC OR AT RELIANT REHAB?
Feldman Legal Group would like to speak to anyone with information regarding the scheme at the Reliant companies to deny therapists the ability to earn overtime pay, even though the FLSA shows that they deserve overtime pay. This scheme dates to April 2019 and perhaps earlier. Our employment attorneys want to interview you about your experiences with the company.
If you believe you deserved overtime wages that you did not receive while working as a PT, OT, PTA, COTA, SLP, or any other similar position at Reliant Rehab, please contact us. We would like to set up a time that is convenient for you to discuss your situation and experiences in any of these job positions.
