Home Health Aide Wage Theft on Long Island: What You Are Owed and Who to Call First

Take a hypothetical. A home health aide who lives in Bay Shore works for a Suffolk agency on 24-hour live-in shifts, four a week, with an older client in Smithtown. The client wakes several times a night. The pay stub shows 13 hours for each shift, 52 hours a week, all at the same hourly rate. On other weeks the agency sends the aide to two clients a day and pays nothing for the drive between them. The aide has never complained, out of worry about losing the assignment.

Is that legal? Not all of it. This is general information, not advice about any one claim. Our Long Island wage and hour lawyer page covers how these claims are brought.

What the records show about home care pay on Long Island

On October 8, 2026, Newsday published an analysis of state and federal labor investigations. From 2017 to 2025, it found, 66 Long Island home health agencies were found to owe more than $11.6 million in wages to nearly 8,000 employees. That figure counts only concluded labor department investigations, and some amounts can change on appeal or settlement. In 2025 alone, home care accounted for nearly 40% of the wages officials found Nassau- and Suffolk-based employers had withheld, more than restaurants or construction. An industry trade group told the paper that misapplied overtime rules are different from intentional underpayment.

One case in federal court in Central Islip shows how these claims run. On July 21, 2020, the U.S. Department of Labor sued Sarene Services, Inc., which does business as Serene Home Nursing Agency in Patchogue, and its owner. The Department alleged that the agency paid live-in aides a set number of hours per 24-hour shift regardless of the hours they actually worked. On April 25, 2025, a jury found the defendants liable for overtime and recordkeeping violations from March 19, 2017 through December 31, 2020, and for retaliation in the way they gathered statements from former live-in aides. On July 31, 2026, the court approved a consent judgment for $3,176,900 in back wages, the same amount again in liquidated damages, and $46,200 in punitive damages, $6.4 million in all, payable through the Secretary to nearly 500 aides listed in the judgment.

Collection is the weak point. Of $4.75 million state investigators ruled was due to Long Island home care aides, Newsday reported, about a quarter had been paid; a federal spokesperson said federal investigators collect about 90%. Consequently, a finding starts the process of getting paid, and the choices below matter.

The pay floor: what every home care aide is owed

The rules come from a statute written for home care aides, New York’s wage order and the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.

The home care minimum wage is its own number, above the general $17.00 minimum, set for “each hour worked in downstate,” which includes Nassau and Suffolk. The statute also says who enforces it: the aide, or the Commissioner of Labor on the aide’s behalf, may bring a civil action under the Labor Law. This is not a rule only an agency can enforce; it is money a court can award.

For decades, federal rules let employers claim an overtime exemption for live-in domestic workers and a minimum wage and overtime exemption for companionship services. The Department of Labor’s 2013 rule took both exemptions away from third-party employers, effective January 1, 2015. A family that hires an aide directly may still claim them, though New York’s own overtime rule still applies; an agency may not claim them. Consequently, an aide placed by an agency is owed time and a half after 40 hours in the week under federal law, whatever the pay stub calls the shift.

24-hour live-in shifts and the 13-hour rule

New York lets an agency pay a live-in aide for 13 hours of a 24-hour shift, but only on a condition. The Second Department, which hears Nassau and Suffolk appeals, wrote on September 24, 2025, that the agency “was only required to pay home health aides and personal care assistants who worked 24-hour live-in shifts for 13 hours of work, unless they did not receive the prescribed breaks.” Newsday describes those breaks as eight hours of rest, including at least five hours of uninterrupted sleep, and three hours for meals. Federal law reaches a similar place by a different road. For an aide on 24-hour duty, sleep time may be excluded only by agreement, every call to duty during it counts as hours worked, and if the aide cannot get at least five hours of sleep, the whole sleep period is working time. For an aide who actually resides in the household, the federal test is a reasonable agreement on hours, and interruptions still count as hours worked.

The same decision denied class status because the aides had not shown a policy of denying the breaks. Whether this aide got this sleep on this night is the question, and the aide is often the only witness besides the client.

You need to keep records. The employer is required by New York labor law and the Fair Labor Standards Act to maintain records of your hours worked and wages earned. Don’t rely on them. Every day you work, write down the time that you started, the time that you finished, whether or not you got a meal break, how long it was, and every night that your sleep is interrupted and for what period of time. Write it down. Don’t just remember it.

Travel between clients, and long days

An aide who sees two clients in one day is working while driving from the first to the second. New York’s wage order requires the minimum wage for time spent traveling “to the extent that such traveling is part of the duties of the employee,” and the federal rule says travel “from job site to job site during the workday, must be counted as hours worked.” Those travel hours also count toward the 40 that trigger overtime.

Long days can carry one more hour of pay. The Department of Labor’s home care fact sheet says an aide whose workday lasts longer than ten hours may be entitled to one extra hour at the minimum wage rate. Our post on New York’s spread-of-hours rule explains the pay-level test the Department applies and walks through the math.

Where to complain first, and what a private lawsuit adds

Two agencies take these claims: the state Department of Labor’s Division of Labor Standards, through its Wage Theft Hub, and the federal Wage and Hour Division. The federal division says filing and investigation cost nothing, complaints are confidential, and it enforces the law regardless of a worker’s immigration status. The state’s own page warns of two limits: Labor Standards may not accept a claim for wages earned more than three years earlier, or one you have already taken to court.

Jason Tenenbaum’s view is that when the government is already enforcing against the agency, the aide should start there.

So when the state or the federal government has already got your agency under its microscope, you go contact them first. You go to the New York State Department of Labor, the Division of Labor Standards, and you put in a wage claim, or you file a complaint with the federal Wage and Hour Division. Government enforcement is free. It doesn’t cost you anything to file it, nothing for them to investigate it, and the federal complaint is confidential.

And then you can also bring a private lawsuit under the Fair Labor Standards Act or the New York Labor Law. The question is going to be, what’s the efficacy of that while the government case is running? So under the state Labor Law, a complaint to the Department of Labor will pause the six-year clock and the investigation will not prevent you from bringing your own lawsuit. Under the federal law, once the Secretary of Labor files suit for your overtime, your right to bring your own lawsuit for that overtime ends.

One federal detail matters at the end: accepting full payment of overtime under the Secretary’s supervision waives your own federal claim to it and to the equal amount in liquidated damages. Before signing for a check, ask what it releases. The cards set out what each route offers.

How far back you can reach

The New York clock is the long one: six years, paused from the day you file with the Department of Labor until its order is final or it closes the investigation. Federal claims are shorter, and a federal complaint does not pause them, so an aide who left an agency three years ago may have only a state claim. The chart puts every clock in order.

If the agency punishes you for asking

The aide in the hypothetical stayed quiet for fear of losing work, and the law speaks to that directly. Labor Law § 215 forbids retaliation against an employee who complains, to the employer, the Department of Labor or anyone else, about conduct the employee reasonably and in good faith believes violates the Labor Law; the court must award liquidated damages of up to $20,000, on top of lost pay, reinstatement or front pay, and fees. Labor Law § 740 adds a second route for an employee who tells a supervisor or a public body about a practice the employee reasonably believes violates the law (a report to a public body generally has to follow one to a supervisor), with a jury, front pay and punitive damages for a willful violation. The federal law bars firing a worker for filing a complaint. In the Serene case, the $46,200 in punitive damages was for retaliation. Our post on being fired for complaining about unpaid wages covers these claims in more detail.

And an agency that is not happy with an aide who exercises their rights can end up on the wrong end of a lawsuit for retaliation. That’s always the big play: there’s a retaliation hook. Labor Law section 215 states that an employer may not fire you, threaten you or penalize you because you complained to the employer or to the Department of Labor about a labor law violation such as unpaid wages. You have two years to go to court.

Bring these to the first call

A lawyer looking at a home care wage claim asks for the same few things, and most of them are already in the aide’s phone or kitchen drawer.

Back to the aide in Bay Shore

Straight time for 52 hours a week is the first problem: an agency owes time and a half after 40 hours under federal law. The 13-hour pay for each live-in shift holds only if the aide got the sleep and meal breaks, and a client who wakes several times a night makes that the contested question. The drive between two clients is work time. If the Department of Labor is already looking at the agency, the first call is to the Department, and a log started tonight is the evidence on the sleep question. Our overview of New York wage and hour laws covers the general rules.

Sources

• Newsday, “Long Island employers stole nearly $4 million from their workers last year. Nearly 40% came from home healthcare.” (Oct. 8, 2026; updated Oct. 11)
• Sonderling v. Sarene Services, Inc., No. 2:20-cv-03273 (E.D.N.Y. July 31, 2026), memorandum and order approving consent judgment
• Public Health Law § 3614-f, Home care minimum wage increase
• NYS Department of Labor, Minimum Wage for Home Care Aides
• 12 NYCRR 142-2.1, 142-2.2, 142-2.6 (minimum wage, overtime, employer records)
• Konstantynovska v Friendly Home Care, Inc., 2025 NY Slip Op 05069 (2d Dept Sept. 24, 2025)
• 29 CFR § 552.109, Third party employment and § 552.102, Live-in domestic service employees
• 29 CFR § 785.22, Duty of 24 hours or more and § 785.38, Travel that is all in the day’s work
• U.S. Department of Labor, Fact Sheet #79B, Live-in Domestic Service Workers
• 29 USC § 216, Penalties, § 255, Statute of limitations and § 215, Prohibited acts
• Labor Law § 663, Civil action, § 198, Costs, remedies and § 195, Notice and record-keeping
• Labor Law § 215, Prohibited retaliation and § 740, Retaliatory action by employers
• NYS Department of Labor, Wage Theft Hub and The Labor Standards Complaint Process
• U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division, Frequently Asked Questions: Complaints and the Investigation Process

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Home care aides keep Long Island’s older and disabled residents at home, and the law sets a floor under their pay that an agency cannot bargain away. Our wage and hour practice handles these claims against employers.

If you are a home health aide and your agency paid you for fewer hours than you worked, call (516) 750-0595 with your pay stubs and your own log of hours, or request a free case review.