Caregivers and takers

“It’s a classic tale of human greed. Their entire business model is predicated on not making payroll.”

— Tia Koonse
legal and policy research manager at the UCLA Labor Center

By Jennifer Gollan

She alights from a black Ferrari convertible, her Christian Louboutin stilettos glinting in the sunlight. The lid of her black lacquer grand piano is propped open in the living room of her plush Beverly Hills home on the aptly named Clear View Drive, overlooking a stunning panorama.

“I own a chain of elderly care facilities,” she says into the camera on Bravo’s reality television show “The Millionaire Matchmaker.”

“My net worth is $3 to $4 million, probably.”

Stephanie Costa was 30 and rich by most standards yet believed it was time to fetch a man of means.

“You don’t want to date down,” the show’s host says to her. “You want to date 200 grand and above who treats you like a princess.”

Costa nods. “Before I know it, I’m alone in the nursing home … in my own nursing home.”

Costa’s lifestyle was supported in part by six board-and-care homes she owned in California’s Central Valley that now operate under the names Clear View Retirement Group and Copper River Retirement Group.

About half of Costa’s net worth was threatened when she and her company initially were cited for about $1.6 million for labor violations, including wage theft – not paying 11 employees for working much of 24 hours a day, six days a week. They later would settle for pennies on the dollar.

Costa, who declined to be interviewed for this story, is a rare public face of a burgeoning multibillion-dollar elder care industry that is enabling operators to become wealthy by treating workers as indentured servants. Across the country, legions of these caregivers earn a pittance to tend to the elderly in residential houses refurbished as care facilities, according to an investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting.

A home owned by Stephanie Costa in
Beverly Hills, Calif.
CREDIT: Rachel de Leon/Reveal

The profit margins can be huge and, for violators of labor laws, hinge on the widespread exploitation of thousands of caretakers, many of them poor immigrants effectively earning $2 to $3.50 an hour to work around the clock. The federal hourly minimum wage is $7.25.

Reveal interviewed more than 80 workers, care-home operators and government regulators and reviewed hundreds of wage theft cases handled by California and federal labor regulators, workers and local district attorneys. The investigation found rampant wage theft has pushed a vast majority of these caregivers into poverty.

Workers are left feeling desperate and trapped. Many caregivers say they rise before daybreak to cook meals, shower residents and scrub toilets. At night, they are deprived of sufficient sleep because they have to wake to change adult diapers, dispense painkillers, return wandering dementia residents to their beds and shift the bedridden every two hours to thwart bedsores.

Workers describe sleeping in hallways and garages, on couches and the floor. Some care homes deduct $25 a day from caregivers’ paychecks for “lodging.”

Exploited caregivers rarely are allowed a day off; even then, they often must pay their substitutes. Two caregivers recounted having miscarriages after their bosses refused to allow them time off or to stop lifting heavy residents.

Because these workers often live where they work, they are under the watchful eye of their bosses. They are bullied into not cooperating with investigators. In some cases, care-home operators have threatened to report undocumented workers to authorities.

Human trafficking – in which workers, particularly Filipinos, are coerced, manipulated and exploited – also is not uncommon, according to prosecutors and attorneys. For example, several family members were charged last year with human trafficking and labor abuse in a case involving caregivers in San Mateo County, California, south of San Francisco.

“It’s a classic tale of human greed,” said Tia Koonse, legal and policy research manager at the UCLA Labor Center. “Their entire business model is predicated on not making payroll. It relies on people being willing to work for 24 hours a day for less than a dollar an hour. Only trafficked people will put up with that.” (Click to continue)

***

Full Article & Source:
Caregivers and takers