WEST LEBANON — A West Lebanon provider of in-home care workers is categorically denying that it cheated employees out of overtime pay and forced employees to “kick back” wages recovered by the government, setting up a potential court fight challenging U.S. Department of Labor allegations that the company is again abusing labor laws.

Your Comfort Zone, which provides around-the-clock in-home care providers for senior clients in the Upper Valley, denies “all allegations of wrongdoing, liability, retaliation, obstruction or interference” in regard to how it compensated employees for their work at the agency, and further said “any changes to time sheets were made with employee participation, knowledge and/or consent,” according to the Your Comfort Zone’s answer to the government’s allegations filed in federal court in New Hampshire.

The U.S. Department of Labor sued Your Comfort Zone and its owner, Rosalind Godfrey, in U.S. District Court in October, alleging employees were pressured to “kick back” owed wages recovered for them earlier by the Department of Labor and falsifying employee time sheets submitted to federal investigators probing the company’s pay practices.

The U.S. District Court subsequently ordered a preliminary injunction on Oct. 17, 2022, to prevent Your Comfort Zone from engaging in the conduct alleged in the government’s lawsuit and ordered Godfrey to stop her alleged interference into the government’s investigation of the company.

This is the third time the Labor Department’s wage and hour division has taken action against Your Comfort Zone. In two prior investigations in 2018, the Labor Department said its Wage and Hour Division found that the company failed to pay a total of $100,055 in overtime wages to 25 employees.

In a 12-page Defendants’ Joint Answer and Statement of Affirmative Defenses, Your Comfort Zone and Godfrey’s attorneys presented a paragraph-by-paragraph rebuttal to the Department of Labor’s complaint, even counter-claiming that the government got Godfrey’s state of residence wrong.

Your Comfort Zone and Godfrey acknowledged that the government’s “complaint accurately describes the findings that were reported” in regard to overtime compensation for employees and the keeping of accurate and complete pay records following the second investigation by the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division covering an eight-month period in 2018. But the defendants nonetheless denied similar infractions the government said it uncovered in the course of its first investigation in 2018, which covered a two-period from 2016 to 2018.

The amount of compensation the Department of Labor said Your Comfort Zone owed employees in each of the two investigations is significant: in the first investigation the government said Your Comfort Zone was found to owe employees a total of approximately $70,000, and the second investigation found the company owed employees a total of approximately $30,000, according to the government’s complaint.

“Defendants admit that, with the participation, consent and/or knowledge of employees, hours were added for unworked time to employee timesheets, but state that the changes were made in good faith and not in retaliation for or connection with” the Department of Labor’s current investigation of the agency’s pay practices, the Answer document said.

The Department of Labor alleges that Your Comfort Zone’s Godfrey coerced employees into returning owed back wages that had been collected by the Department of Labor from Your Comfort Zone following investigations into the agency’s pay practices. In addition, the Labor Department alleges that Godfrey interfered with the government’s investigation of her company.

In interviews with the Valley News, former employees have corroborated the allegations in the government’s lawsuit.

Attorneys for Your Comfort Zone and Godfrey did not respond on Wednesday to a request for comment sent via email.

Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.

]]>