A federal magistrate judge is set to hear arguments this week on whether a wage-and-hour lawsuit brought by home care workers against Community Care Companions Inc. (CCC) can continue as a collective action—proceedings supported by legal counsel including Gladstein, Reif & Meginniss LLP on behalf of the workers.
The case, first filed in 2019, alleges that CCC violated the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) by failing to properly pay overtime, issuing late wages, and neglecting to compensate workers for travel time and expenses between client homes. The plaintiffs argue that these practices represent a systemic failure, not isolated incidents.
The workers contend that the 58 opt-in plaintiffs share near-identical legal and factual claims with named plaintiffs Oretha Beh and Kimberly Balkum, since all were employed during the same period and denied overtime pay in similar ways. In briefing, they emphasized that collective treatment is appropriate under the FLSA because of the common company practices at issue.
The motions are scheduled for oral argument Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York, where the case—Beh et al. v. Community Care Companions Inc.—continues to be a closely watched test of collective wage enforcement in the home care industry.