It was a full eight-hour day. You rushed between homes, attended to clients’ needs, waited through traffic, and completed your notes—but your paycheck says you only worked five hours. Why? Because the app stopped counting your time when you left each client’s driveway or recorded travel time and hid it from your view. This scenario plays out daily as home health aides (HHA) discover that the very technology designed to track their work hours is systematically underpaying them.
Digital wage theft is a growing problem in the home care industry—resulting in multiple lawsuits totaling millions of dollars in back wages reimbursement. When employers rely on flawed pay data or misleading technology to calculate wages, you lose money you’ve rightfully earned. At Phillips Garcia Law, our Massachusetts unpaid wage attorney is ready to defend your rights. Here’s how digital wage theft is spreading in home care—and what to watch out for.
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What Are the Risks of Digital Timekeeping?
Since September 2024, Massachusetts has required Electronic Visit Verification (EVV) platforms for most agency-based home health services, but many providers are allowed to use similar but private apps. The platforms feature functions such as GPS-based clock-in/clock-out and digital visit logs, marketed as tools for streamlined payroll and real-time workforce data.
EVV platforms were originally modeled on traditional workplaces with fixed shifts and static worksites. Home health care, by contrast, frequently involves:
- Extended shifts in private homes.
- Travel between multiple clients.
- Services that are relational and variable, not easily reduced to checkboxes.
HHAs only receive pay stubs showing hours logged by the app—not the full scope of their scheduled appointments and assignments. This makes it harder to recognize when they're being underpaid for actual work time.
How Do Apps Shortchange Home Health Aides?
When your employer relies on inaccurate, incomplete, or flawed wage tracking technology, you could lose a considerable amount of money. Because pay stubs are generated from app-logged hours, missing travel time or off-the-clock duties can be harder for HHAs to detect. Here are just a few digital wage violations our firm helps clients resolve:
Travel Time
In home care, travel time underpayments have been a recurring enforcement and litigation issue. Many apps track time spent at client locations, ignoring travel between multiple clients during a single shift. Federal and state labor rules confirm that travel between clients during the workday must be compensated.
Rigid Task Timing
Apps expect predetermined timeframes for activities, but real caregiving doesn't follow scripts. When clients need additional assistance beyond app expectations, this extra time goes uncompensated.
Rounding Rule Manipulation
Some apps automatically round clock times to the nearest quarter-hour or apply other rounding rules that consistently favor employers. These small adjustments shave minutes from each shift, creating systematic wage theft that appears mathematically legitimate.
GPS Malfunctions
Technical glitches from poor cell service or indoor signal blocking can result in missed clock-ins or clock-outs, leading to unpaid time that you must fight to recover.
Digital Legitimization Tactics
Apps create detailed reports and timestamps that make underpayment appear systematic and compliant with labor laws. This technological veneer makes it harder for workers to challenge missing wages since the software appears authoritative.
Automatic Clock-Outs
Some employers program apps to clock HHAs out after predetermined periods—regardless of whether work is complete. This often forces workers to choose between providing necessary care and receiving proper compensation.
Compliance Software Masking
Employers hide behind "compliant" wage tracking software to deflect responsibility for systematic underpayment. They claim the technology handles all calculations properly, obscuring their legal obligation to ensure accurate compensation regardless of the system used.
Overtime Calculation Errors
Apps may not properly account for hours worked across multiple locations or correctly calculate overtime rates when HHAs exceed 40 hours per week or fail to include travel time as overtime.
What Are Your Home Health Wage Protections Under the Law?
Under the Massachusetts Wage Act, employers who fail to pay wages face mandatory treble damages and recovery of attorney’s fees. “Treble damages” mean that if our team at Phillips Garcia Law finds evidence that your employer neglected to pay for all your compensable time, you may be awarded up to three times the amount you lost. This includes:
- “Working time” includes any period an employee is required to be on duty or at a prescribed workplace.
- Travel between job patients or work sites is compensable.
- Mileage pay for using your personal vehicle for travel between appointments
- Overtime pay for all travel time when you’ve already worked 40 hours that week
- Employers must provide accurate pay stubs under the Wage Act.
The Attorney General’s Fair Labor Division has made wage theft enforcement a top priority, with regular actions in health care and home care. While the office doesn’t single out “digital wage theft” by name, it recognizes that electronic systems can enable or disguise violations. In cases where violations are willful, repeated, or particularly egregious, the Attorney General’s Office may escalate enforcement by pursuing criminal prosecution.
Don’t Let an Employer Take Away Your Hard-Earned Pay: Call Phillips Garcia Law For Help
Under no circumstances should you accept underpayment just because your wages are tracked electronically rather than by hand. Whether it's miscalculated travel time, unrecognized overtime, the failure to pay mileage, or some other violation, if you suspect you’re not being paid properly due to digital wage theft, call Phillips Garcia Law. Our Massachusetts employee rights attorney knows all too well how digital wage theft costs home health aides thousands of dollars annually in unpaid wages. Download our free book, The Original Pocket Legal Guide to Massachusetts Wage & Hour Laws, then contact us right away to fight for the income you’ve earned.