Act now! If you haven’t already sent Secretary Solis a letter urging her to extend Fair Labor Standards Act coverage to home care workers, visit our Legislative Action Center now and send one in. It will only take a minute of your time.
A strongly worded editorial in yesterday’s New York Times echoes the DCA’s call to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) to extend federal minimum wage and overtime protection to home care workers.
Fair Pay for Caregivers starts by outlining the DOL ruling and Supreme Court decision that led to the exclusion of home care workers from the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act. It then describes the House and Senate letters sent to Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis as a result of the DCA’s campaign. The editorial explains why failing to ensure that home care workers get fair pay is not only unfair to workers but also costly to taxpayers, who foot the bill for the food stamps and other public assistance that many home care aides must rely on. “The public pays in other ways, too: turnover is high, undermining the quality of care and driving up overall costs,” the editorial notes.
The paper regrets the DOL’s “slow start” in addressing this issue and warns that further delays may allow the interests of home care aides to “get mired in the broader debate over health care costs.” Another danger, it adds, is that “industry opposition to better pay will gain renewed traction in today’s troubled economy.”
The three-month comment period that would follow the issuance of a new rule should allow plenty of time to deal with “legitimate concerns, like how to help states whose Medicaid home care budgets are based on the previous pay practices,” the editorial says.
“Home care aides should not have to wait any longer than that for the fair pay they have been denied for so long,” it concludes.
Elise Nakhnikian
Communications Director
Direct Care Alliance
