Custodial Company Pays Back Wages to Employee Denied Paid Family Leave

Cleaning companies are not exempt from laws that provide paid leave to parents who need to take time off for children who are either sick with COVID-19 or doing remote learning due to the pandemic. Eagle Cleaning Services Inc., a custodial services company based in Bessemer, Alabama, has agreed to pay US$2,066 in back wages after it wrongly denied paid leave to an employee who missed work to care for children doing remote learning. The U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD) recently said in a recent news release that the company violated the requirements of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) by denying the employee paid family leave.

“FFCRA helps the U.S. combat and defeat the workplace effects of the coronavirus by giving tax credits to American businesses with fewer than 500 employees” by providing employees with two weeks of paid leave. Additionally, the Emergency Family and Medical Leave Expansion Act (EFMLEA) “provides up to an additional 10 weeks of paid leave at two-thirds their regular rate of pay to care for their children whose school or childcare provider is unavailable due to the coronavirus,” according to the news release.

For more information on how much leave worker’s may qualify to use and the wages employers must pay, visit WHD’s “Quick Benefits Tips.”