As Helping Hands for Elders, Home Care Workers Push for Respect
5:30 am in Uncategorized by Michelle Chen
Photo: SEIU.org
Cross-posted from In These Times.
Somewhere in your community today, an elder person is wondering when she’ll be able to take her medicine today, or have a chance to see the sun. And her mind will be put at ease once her aide arrives to help her get dressed, eat breakfast or take a walk in the park. For millions of aging households, a home care worker is the only person who provides the day-to-day assistance and emotional interaction they need to function. Yet, typically, that worker is neglected herself–by the government.
Workers caring for our greying population are intimately woven into our family lives, but are alienated from essential labor protections–though that could change soon. As we’ve reported previously, a longstanding loophole in the Fair Labor Standards Act excludes home care or “companionship” workers from minimum wage and time-and-a-half overtime regulations. Nationwide, about 2.5 million home care and personal assistance aides–projected to grow to about 3.8 million by 2020–work around the clock to help their clients handle the basics of life, while often themselves scraping by on poverty wages.
Back in the early 1970s, Rep. Shirley Chisholm called attention to the plight of home-based workers who had been shut out of regular labor standards. A generation later, workers’ rights advocates are pushing the Labor Department to follow through on a proposed rule change to extend federal minimum wage and overtime protections to currently excluded home care workers–who are disproportionately female and of color. Read the rest of this entry →
