EXCLUSIVE: Pair Team Hit With Class Action Alleging Unpaid Wages Across California Workforce
A former lead care manager says Pair Team employees worked through meal periods and after clocking out. The lawsuit seeks to represent more than 40 hourly workers across four affiliated companies.
By Ryan Merket · Published · Updated
Why it matters
Pair Team is using AI to lower the cost of serving complex Medicare and Medicaid patients. Two employee cases put scrutiny on the human workforce that still carries the model.
A former Pair Team worker whose public profile identifies her as a lead care manager is seeking to represent more than 40 current and former California employees in a proposed class action accusing the healthcare startup of failing to pay workers for time spent working through meal periods and after clocking out.
The complaint was filed July 31 in San Francisco Superior Court and appeared in the court’s newly listed cases Thursday. It names Pair Team Inc., Pair Team MSO LLC, Pair Team Medical Group P.A. and Pair Team Medical Group of California P.C. as defendants.
Erica Rincon Charles alleges that she worked for the companies as an hourly, non-exempt employee from approximately April 2023 until Pair Team terminated her employment in June 2026.
According to the complaint, Pair Team regularly scheduled Charles for at least five eight-hour days each week. She says she also worked beyond eight hours per day and 40 hours per week without receiving all the straight-time and overtime wages she had earned.
Charles alleges that she and other employees performed work during meal periods and continued working after clocking out for the day. Some of that unpaid time should have been paid at the overtime rate, the complaint says.
The lawsuit also claims that Pair Team required, pressured or encouraged employees to complete work that prevented them from taking legally compliant meal and rest breaks. Employees were allegedly denied the additional hour of pay required under California law when those breaks were missed.
The proposed class covers every hourly-paid or non-exempt employee who worked for any of the four Pair Team entities in California during the four years preceding the lawsuit. Charles estimates that the group contains over 40 people.
The complaint brings eight causes of action under California law:
- Failure to pay minimum and straight-time wages
- Failure to pay overtime
- Failure to provide compliant meal periods
- Failure to authorize and permit rest periods
- Failure to pay all final wages when employment ended
- Failure to provide accurate wage statements
- Failure to reimburse necessary employment expenses
- Unfair business practices
Charles also alleges that Pair Team failed to reimburse workers for expenses they paid while performing their jobs. The complaint does not identify the particular expenses, the number of unpaid hours or a total damages figure.
The lawsuit seeks unpaid wages, overtime, meal-and-rest-period premiums, expense reimbursement, waiting-time penalties, damages for inaccurate wage statements, restitution, attorneys’ fees and an injunction against the alleged practices.
The allegations have not been proven, and Pair Team has not yet filed a response.
Work that continued after the clock stopped
Charles’s complaint says Pair Team maintained practices that left some employees working during unpaid time.
Workers allegedly continued performing tasks after clocking out and worked through meal periods without receiving compensation. Pair Team also allegedly failed to keep accurate records of the hours they worked.
The complaint gives few details about the tasks involved or the managers who allegedly imposed them. It does not identify a written policy requiring off-the-clock work. Charles instead alleges that the volume and timing of assigned work caused employees to miss breaks and continue working without pay.
Pair Team allegedly required employees to work longer than five consecutive hours without providing a 30-minute, uninterrupted meal period. Some employees working at least 10 hours were also allegedly denied a second meal period.
Similar allegations apply to rest breaks. Charles says workers were pressured to perform tasks that prevented them from taking the paid 10-minute breaks required for each four-hour period of work.
When Charles’s employment ended in June, Pair Team allegedly failed to include unpaid wages, overtime, break premiums and reimbursable expenses in her final paycheck.
The lawsuit claims the same practices affected other former employees, exposing Pair Team to waiting-time penalties of up to 30 days of wages for each eligible worker.
Charles’s attorneys also say they requested her personnel file, wage statements, timekeeping records and other employment documents before filing suit. Pair Team allegedly failed to produce the records within the periods required by California law.
The complaint reserves Charles’s right to pursue civil penalties under California’s Private Attorneys General Act, commonly known as PAGA. No PAGA claim is included among the eight causes of action currently before the court.
Two care workers in court
Charles is the second person publicly associated with Pair Team’s care-management workforce to sue the company this year.
On April 22, Cindy Baez filed Cindy Baez v. Pair Team, Inc. et al. in Los Angeles Superior Court. The public index classifies the case as a general employment complaint.
Baez named Pair Team and an individual defendant, Ana Robleto. Her public professional profile identifies her as a Pair Team lead care manager and patient-care specialist.
The publicly accessible docket does not reveal Baez’s specific allegations. Christopher Berberian, the attorney representing Baez, did not immediately provide the complaint in response to RuntimeWire’s request Thursday night.
No court has ruled against Pair Team in either case.
The cases are legally distinct. Charles is pursuing wage-and-hour claims on behalf of a proposed statewide class. Baez’s case is currently described only as a general employment complaint.
Their shared connection to Pair Team’s care workforce makes the timing significant for a company whose published clinical results depend heavily on lead care managers.
The human workforce behind Pair Team’s results
Pair Team provides care coordination for patients enrolled in Medicaid and Medicare. In California, it participates in Enhanced Care Management, a benefit created through the state’s CalAIM Medicaid overhaul.
Patients can qualify because of homelessness, serious mental illness, repeated hospital visits or difficulty managing multiple chronic conditions. Pair Team says Medi-Cal pays for the service through participating health plans, leaving patients without a copay.
The company’s care teams help patients schedule appointments, arrange transportation, find housing resources and navigate public-benefit programs. They coordinate with nurses, behavioral-health specialists and clinicians while maintaining direct contact with patients.
Lead care managers perform much of that work.
A peer-reviewed study of 568 Pair Team patients found that lead care managers handled 69.7% of all recorded patient interactions.
Pair Team organizes the workers into care teams with nurses, behavioral-health care managers and nurse practitioners. The company recruits lead care managers from the communities it serves and trains them as community health workers, according to the study.
Their responsibilities include developing care plans, conducting patient outreach, scheduling and attending appointments, and connecting patients with food, housing and transportation.
The study reported that emergency-department visits fell 52% during the year after patients enrolled with Pair Team. Hospital admissions fell 26%, while outpatient visits increased 21%.
Those results came from an observational study without a control group. The authors acknowledged that the findings could have been affected by confounding factors and regression to the mean. Pair Team funded the research, and five of the authors were company employees who held equity.
The study still provides a detailed account of the company’s operating model. Nearly seven out of every 10 documented patient interactions involved lead care managers—the role Charles and Baez publicly identify with.
A profitable company building an AI care manager
Pair Team was founded in 2019 by Neil Batlivala and Cassie Choi and participated in Y Combinator’s summer 2019 batch.
The company raised a $9 million Series A in 2023 from investors including NEXT Ventures, PTX Capital, Kapor Capital, Kleiner Perkins and Y Combinator. Batlivala said at the time that Pair Team had raised approximately $20 million in total.
Pair Team now says it employs over 500 people and operates at an annualized revenue rate above $100 million. Current Y Combinator recruiting materials describe it as profitable and call its next chapter a “vertically integrated AI care manager.”
The company converted into a public benefit corporation in 2025, saying the change placed its mission to serve vulnerable communities into its corporate charter.
Pair Team has also been putting artificial intelligence deeper into its patient-care operation.
The company markets an AI advocate called Flora, along with systems that automate patient outreach, identify gaps in care and coordinate tasks across its medical teams. Current recruiting materials refer to “agentic infrastructure” operating throughout the healthcare safety net.
Pair Team says the technology reduces administrative work and creates more time for employees to work directly with patients.
Charles’s complaint does not mention artificial intelligence or claim that automation caused the alleged wage violations. It also does not connect the company’s technology strategy to her termination.
The company’s AI expansion still forms part of the environment in which its care workforce operates. Pair Team is hiring product and engineering leaders to automate portions of care management while its lead care managers remain responsible for most recorded patient contact.
RuntimeWire asked Pair Team whether AI has changed care-manager staffing, caseloads, job duties, performance evaluations or termination decisions.
Employee reviews describe pressure and hurried training
Anonymous employee reviews cannot establish whether the legal claims are true. They do show that complaints about workload and management extend beyond the two workers now in court.
Pair Team has an overall rating of 2.2 out of five on Indeed, based on 18 reviews available August 6. Its management rating is 1.0, while job security and advancement are rated 1.1.
Many of the critical reviews identify their authors as current or former lead care managers.
A July 2026 reviewer said Pair Team appeared increasingly focused on technology and automation at the expense of clinical care. A June review from a San Diego lead care manager described severe performance metrics and close monitoring.
Other reviewers alleged that managers issued inconsistent instructions, assigned multiple urgent tasks and provided too little training before workers received patient caseloads.
One former lead care manager said new employees watched a small number of training videos before being assigned patients. Another claimed Pair Team used a performance-improvement plan as a path toward termination after the worker completed its requirements.
Pair Team has a 2.8 rating on Glassdoor, based on 50 reviews. Recent reviewers have raised similar concerns about workload, training and management.
The reviews are anonymous, and RuntimeWire could not independently verify the accounts. Other employees have praised Pair Team’s remote flexibility, benefits, paid time off and supportive colleagues.
The reviews also do not prove that employees worked unpaid hours or missed legally required breaks. Those questions will depend on payroll records, timekeeping data, internal communications and testimony gathered through the class-action case.
Charles’s lawsuit alleges that Pair Team failed to provide some of those records after her attorneys requested them.
Public funding and private growth
Pair Team’s services are financed largely through government healthcare programs administered by private health plans.
Its California partners have included L.A. Care, Health Net, Anthem, CalOptima, Alameda Alliance for Health and the Inland Empire Health Plan. The company receives payment through Medi-Cal benefits intended for patients with complex medical and social needs.
In August 2025, Batlivala said Pair Team was serving over 15,000 Medi-Cal members through 14 health plans and more than 100 community organizations. The company is now expanding its model into Medicare and additional states.
That growth gives the class-action allegations wider consequences. Pair Team’s ability to produce clinical results, satisfy health-plan contracts and expand its AI systems depends on the work recorded by its care teams.
Charles is asking the court to certify a class spanning four years and four affiliated companies. The complaint estimates that at least 40 people could qualify, although Pair Team’s employment records will determine the actual number.
Certification is not automatic. Pair Team can challenge whether the proposed workers share sufficiently similar duties, working conditions and alleged injuries to proceed together. The company can also contest the underlying claims and argue that employees received all required wages, breaks and reimbursements.
The litigation remains at its earliest stage.
RuntimeWire sent detailed questions about the allegations to Pair Team and its outside communications representative. We also contacted Thiago Coelho and Rachel Vinson of Wilshire Law Firm, who represent Erica Rincon Charles, and Christopher Berberian, who represents Cindy Baez in the separate Los Angeles case.
We asked Charles’s attorneys to identify the work allegedly performed off the clock, the policies or workloads that prevented breaks, the expenses workers paid personally and the circumstances surrounding Charles’s termination. We asked Pair Team to respond to each allegation and explain whether its use of AI has changed working conditions for lead care managers.
None had responded by the time this draft was completed. RuntimeWire will update the story with any response.