After being so fortunate to attend a first-rate conference on women and work at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and writing a blog about it last month, I have heard from a number of conference attendees who read it. I truly appreciated hearing from you- thanks! Your positive feedback made me feel valued for what I do in a domain that was unfamiliar to me at first. In my first blog, I laid out my uncertainty about how snugly direct care worker issues would fit with women and work issues. But, they did!
Almost all of the estimated 100 attendees were women. We were all there to discuss and learn about women and work issues. As I mentioned in my previous blog, it was amazing to me that direct care worker issues would be such an integral part of the discourse! Why did direct care workers fit in so well? Well, most are women. Not only that, but most are women who face substandard circumstances due to a lack of resources. The underlying causes for the unmet needs of direct care workers are complex. What I do know is that the low wages and too-expensive benefits are only the tip of the iceberg. This became so clear to me at this conference.
To share some of what I have discovered since the conference, I will highlight two presenters:
I have been following the blog of a preeminent feminist economist who spoke at the conference, Nancy Folbre, a professor and an associate editor of the journal Feminist Economics. Her blog is: Care Talk–coordinating research on care provision. Folbre explores the economics of the concept she calls “caring labor,” which includes direct care work. For a more in-depth overview of her work, you can read what she has to say about it in a fascinating video transcript.
An excellent resource that I know I will refer to time and time again is a copy of an article from the Iowa Law Review (Vol. 92) by Peggie R. Smith, Aging and Caring in the Home: Regulating Paid Domesticity in the Twenty-First Century. A tenet of her argument is the need for home-care workers to be protected by employment law.
It would make all of the alumni of the Voices Institute (the Direct Care Alliance’s leadership training program) very proud to know that Smith discusses, at length, the case of Coke v. Long Island Care at Home, Ltd., because some of us may recall writing and delivering speeches on this! For the rest of you, this is a case that went to the Supreme Court, the results of which are highly symbolic for direct care workers. The recap is, a retired direct care worker, Evelyn Coke, tried to be paid for overtime she had worked during her career. She was exempted from the Fair Labor Standards Act as a “companion.” This ruling meant Ms. Coke lost her case, and that direct care workers would not be guaranteed minimum wage and overtime pay.
Nancy Folbre and Peggie R. Smith are two outstanding researchers who, in their work, examine direct care worker issues from very different perspectives than I would have naturally arrived at myself. One is an economist and one is a lawyer. I am a direct care worker.
Others who care about direct care also have their own slant on our issues, such as providers, people who use services, family members, sociologists, psychologists, faith communities, and the list could potentially go on indefinitely when we really think about the far-reaching effects of the influence of direct care.
It is so important to be open-minded and educated when thinking out direct care issues. I believe that there is a need for inter-sectional research, such as including business-related research in our discussions of turnover and other human resources issues.
Different perspectives can help us to understand the complexities of problems, and to talk about them in a variety of ways.
Bridget Siljander
Direct Care Worker Specialist, Direct Care Alliance
