Valuing Hard Work

Andrew Friedman

Valuing Hard Work

The federal Department of Labor says that home health aides are not covered by minimum wage and overtime laws.

Evelyn Coke spent decades of her life caring for others, and now, in her old age, she is leading the fight to demand that home care providers have their hard work valued like other workers.

This past weekend, Steve Greenhouse of the New York Times wrote an article about Ms. Coke's case, and the fact that the Supreme Court would be hearing it in less than one month. The article describes how there will soon be 2 million home health care workers, and how these workers often work twenty-four hours or more at a stretch and never receive overtime pay.

Their working conditions are indisputably deplorable. Nonetheless, the Bush Administration has lined up against them. More surprisingly, the Bloomberg Administration has too. Notwithstanding Bloomberg's Poverty Commission, he seems willing to accept the impoverishment of workers such as Ms. Coke. Why - to save money.

If home health care workers receive decent wages and overtime pay, Medicaid and Medicare costs would rise an estimed $250 million in New York City. That's about what the annual $400 property tax give-back to homeowners that Mayor Bloomberg instituted costs.

Given that, and given that this year New York City had close to a 3 billion dollar budget surplus, it is deeply disappointing that the Mayor is not supporting the right of hard-working home health aides to be treated like other workers.

This case is about values and priorities.

Let's hope the Supreme Court values the work of caring for our elderly and infirm..

Posted at 8:09 AM, Mar 26, 2007 in Labor | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Comments

As Mr. Friedman states, it is time that the Labor Department and state governments delegate equal employment rights to home care aides. Home care aids work a rigorous job with long hours, often 60 or 70 hours a week. Without the guarantees or minimum wage and overtime coverage, home care attendants like Ms. Coke can hardly earn a living wage.

An examination of the history of employment rights for home care aides bolsters the argument made by Mr. Friedman even further. Before 1974, it was the norm for home care agencies to give overtime coverage and minimum wage to their employees. Yet, when Congress amended the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1974, they extended overtime coverage to household maids and cooks while excluding coverage for �companions� of the elderly.

After the act, the Labor Department began to consider home care workers as �companions� rather than real employees, and thereby, denied them coverage and a minimum wage. But the assertion is blatantly untrue. Home care workers work real and demanding jobs, employed by real and legitimate agencies. So why aren�t home care aids given the same rights as maids and cooks, as the greater work force?

The argument of the Bush and Bloomberg administration is flawed. They contest that the new labor laws would increase Medicare and Medicaid costs, raising government expenditure. This opposition is based on a blatant disregard for what is ethically right or wrong. The administration wants to deny the rights of home care workers on the ground of an increase in government spending. As Mr. Friedman points out, we have only to look at Mayor Bloomberg or Bush�s tax cuts to see the underlying hypocrisy of the argument. While they deny Ms. Coke access to her employment rights because of fiscal restraints, both administrations have passed legislation for tax cuts, which decrease the fiscal budget. The only difference is that employment rights for home care workers would benefit women like Ms. Coke, a Jamaican immigrant living in Queens, while the tax breaks go to the administrations� wealthy and influential constituency.