DCA Board of Directors Approves Home Care Worker Resolution

DCA board of directors unanimously approved a resolution to launch a campaign to ensure that home care workers receive the basic protections under our nation’s Fair Labor Standards Act.

Here’s the entire resolution:

RESOLUTION OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS
September 27 2007

Preamble

Direct Care Alliance

The Direct Care Alliance is a nationwide and state-based alliance of direct care workers, employers, and people of all ages and disabilities who use long-term services, care, and supports. We are united to build an empowered and valued professional direct care workforce, essential to ensuring high quality services, a life of dignity, respect, autonomy, and opportunity for all to participate in community life.

The Direct Care Alliance brings a unique perspective to the national long-term care dialogue through our conviction that:

• The intimate, interpersonal yet professional relationship between frontline direct care workers (home care aides, personal care attendants, personal assistants, nursing assistants, direct support professionals and others) and service users/consumers fundamentally determines the quality of care;
• Quality jobs that offer living wages, benefits, training and respectful working conditions are essential to the development of stable quality services and supports that truly satisfy consumer needs;
• The inter-dependence of consumers, workers and providers requires that any system change be sensitive to the needs of each group and include each group as they advocate for system change.

The System of Long-term Services, Care and Supports

The current system of long-term services, care and supports is growing rapidly as the population of the United States ages, with the number of people projected to need assistance with the activities of daily living expected to double from thirteen million in 2000 to twenty-seven million in 2050. As consumers demand to remain in their own homes and participate as equals in life activities, the system must be “re-balanced” from nursing homes to home- and community-based services. As a result home care and personal assistance occupations are among the fastest growing in the country with a need for nearly 2 million in-home aides projected by 2014, compared to 1.3 million in 2006.

At this time of growth and change, under-funding is eroding job quality and endangering the ability of consumers to receive the services they need in the setting of their choice.

The Exclusion of Home Care Workers from the Fair Labor Standards Act Upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2007

The Federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) was enacted in1938 to ensure a minimum standard of living for workers through the provision of a minimum wage, overtime pay and other protections. At that time domestic workers were excluded from its protections. In 1974 the FLSA was amended to include domestic employees such as housekeepers, full-time nannies, chauffeurs and cleaners. However, a narrow exception of coverage was included for babysitters and for employees who provide “companionship services to individuals who because of age or disability are unable to care for themselves.”

In 2007 the United States Supreme Court, in hearing a case brought by a home care attendant working for an agency in New York named Evelyn Coke, upheld the right of the Department of Labor to interpret the “companionship” exemption to include all direct care workers in the home, even those employed by third party agencies. As a result all direct care workers in the home whether they provide health-related or personal assistance services are defined as “companions” and are denied FLSA protection.

Resolution:

Whereas:

1. The Direct Care Alliance believes that it is fundamentally unacceptable for home care and personal assistance workers not to have the basic protections awarded to all hourly workers under the Fair Labor Standards Act;

2. The Direct Care Alliance believes that the recent Supreme Court decision in the case of Long Island Care at Home & Osborne vs. Evelyn Coke, denying overtime pay and labor protections for home care workers highlights the need to educate decision makers and the public on the inter-dependence of workers, consumers, and employers in long-term care;

3. The Direct Care Alliance believes that the development of a competent and trained direct care workforce is essential for the future delivery of quality home care and personal assistance services, and that the term “companionship” does not adequately describe the expertise required for this work;

4. The Direct Care Alliance knows that the Supreme Court decision highlights the overall irrationality of the current long-term care system in which workers are not paid adequately for the services they provide and consumers are not receiving the services they need because there is not sufficient money in the system for either;

5. The Direct Care Alliance recognizes that providing protections under the FLSA for direct care workers may increase costs for consumers and the Direct Care Alliance will therefore make every effort to assure that providing these worker protections does not create a situation where consumers must choose between paying for needed and timely services and paying overtime for their direct care services;

6. The Direct Care Alliance knows that the increasing shortage of direct care workers to provide long-term services and supports to the ever-growing number of people in this country who need such assistance will be made worse by an absence of basic labor protections for this workforce;

7. The Direct Care Alliance is committed to ensuring that all direct care workers have the full protections of the Fair Labor Standards Act and resolves to work toward a coalition of allies, concerned organizations, individuals and decision makers to advocate for the necessary legislative, regulatory, and policy changes consistent with our mission;

Therefore let it be resolved as follows:

1. That the Direct Care Alliance shall work with allies and partners who are consumers, workers and employers, to build a campaign to seek legislative and regulatory changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to afford basic protections for all home care and personal assistance workers.

2. That the Direct Care Alliance shall urge its members and allies to work to achieve protections for direct care workers in the home through changes in state labor regulations where such regulations are not already in place.

3. That the Direct Care Alliance shall simultaneously seek increased financing for publicly funded long-term services, care and supports to compensate for any additional costs incurred as a result of FLSA protections for direct care workers in the home.