Home care workers are taking Public Partnerships LLC to federal court over allegations that the company has mismanaged payments for tens of thousands of caregivers amid the state’s rocky home care consolidation.
Public Partnerships LLC, or PPL, became the sole payroll-processing entity for workers within the consumer-directed personal assistance program on April 1, replacing roughly 600 third-party businesses which previously carried out that task. Since then, home care users and workers have accused the company of missing paychecks and routinely underpaying caregivers, many of whom are low-income and rely on regular paychecks to cover rent and groceries.
Caregivers backed by the Legal Aid Society filed a class-action lawsuit in a Brooklyn federal court on Friday, alleging that PPL has mishandled their payments since taking over. Workers allege that they have been unable to reliably clock in on PPL’s timekeeping app, that they’ve been paid incorrectly for overnight shifts and that PPL has lost or deleted timesheets, according to the complaint.
“The different challenges faced by personal assistants are all expressions of a single problem: PPL’s wholly inadequate infrastructure for onboarding, scheduling, paying and communicating with employees,” the lawsuit said.
Lacey Hautzinger, a spokeswoman for PPL, said that the company is reviewing the filings and cannot comment further on pending litigation.
“We’re committed to ensuring consumers continue to receive care, personal assistants are paid on time and payments follow state and federal requirements to protect the integrity of the CDPAP program,” Hautzinger said.
PPL’s payment challenges have emerged in the weeks since it took over payroll, with caregivers filing a similar case in a federal court in Rochester last week. The lawsuits are the latest hiccup in the state’s troubled home care consolidation, which aims to cut costs within the estimated $11 billion program. Opponents of the consolidation say that the transition was too rushed, putting the roughly 280,000 older individuals and people with disabilities who used the program in harm’s way.
Philip Calderon, a 25-year-old caregiver in Staten Island and lead plaintiff on the case, said he has not been paid all month despite working 40-hour weeks to provide home care services to his father, according to the lawsuit. Calderon has recorded his hours in the timekeeping system and faxed timesheets to the company, but hasn’t been paid because of an error message that company representatives chalked up to an IT problem, the complaint alleges.
Meanwhile, PPL has touted its progress in sending workers their paychecks. The company has paid at least 155,000 caregivers more than $240 million this month, according to data released Friday. The sum marks a fraction of the at least 250,000 workers who have started registering with the new payment platform.
