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Fair Pay for Home
Health Aides
by Paula Span,
The New York Times
February 8, 2012
Home care
workers provide a crucial bulwark between older adults and assisted
living or nursing homes. They help seniors bathe and dress, make their
meals and do their laundry, take them shopping or escort them to
appointments, and do a host of other chores that allow them to live at
home for as long as possible.
And for close to 40 years, they and other domestic workers have been
excluded from the federal Fair Labor Standards Act that mandates
minimum wages and overtime pay for most other American workers.
The campaign to win federal protection for these workers, now nearly
2.5 million in number, has surged and waned over the years. The
outgoing Clinton administration proposed revising the law; the incoming
Bush administration shut the process down. An elderly New Yorker named
Evelyn Coke, who’d never been paid overtime in her two decades caring
for the elderly and sick, managed to get her case heard by the Supreme
Court; it ruled against her on narrow grounds.
In December, the federal Department of Labor took the latest step when
it proposed revising the Fair Labor Standards Act to include most home
care aides. It wants comments from the public. Readers here have had
considerable experience with home care; I hope you’ll let the
regulators know what you think.
To e-mail your comments to the Labor Department, use this link:
http://www.regulations.gov/#!submitComment;D=WHD-2011-0003-0001
To write snail mail, address your letter to:
Mary Ziegler, Director
Division of Regulations, Legislation, and Interpretation
Wage and Hour Division
U.S. Department of Labor, Room S-3502
200 Constitution Avenue N.W.
Washington, DC 20210
The last time we discussed this issue, some commenters thought it
unfair to discriminate against this group of workers. “Everyone who
works overtime deserves overtime pay,” said Curios, from Brooklyn. “It
does not matter if you are sitting around ‘just in case’; you are not
free to come and go.”
But others worried about families being able to afford home care. “This
will have MAJOR unintended consequences,” wrote Cheryl A. Gajowski of
Yorktown Heights, N.Y. “People who pay individually, unless they are
wealthy, are going to cut hours because they will not be able to pay
higher rates. Some will lose jobs. More people will hire off the books
entirely.”
That’s the industry position. It argues that higher wages and,
especially, overtime pay will put home care out of reach for many
clients and cause agencies to cut workers’ hours. Yet 21 states have
enacted minimum wage statutes for home care workers, and 15 mandate
minimum wage and overtime pay, without any apparent crisis.
Moreover, these are demanding, poorly paid jobs with high injury rates
and high turnover. If we don’t make them more attractive, will our
aging nation be able to find the many additional home care workers we
will need in the years ahead?
We can continue the conversation for as long as we want at The New Old
Age. But the Labor Department has set a deadline for public comments on
this proposed policy change. Weigh in by Feb. 27.
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