Evelyn Coke
“Year in and year out, Evelyn Coke left her Queens house early to go to the homes of elderly, sick, often dying people. She bathed them, cooked for them, helped them dress and monitored their medications. She sometimes worked three consecutive 24-hour shifts,” starts an article in yesterday’s New York Times.
“She loved the work, but she earned only around $7 an hour and got no overtime pay,” the article continues. “For years Ms. Coke, a single mother of five, quietly grumbled, and then, quite uncharacteristically, rebelled. In a case that reached the Supreme Court in 2007, Ms. Coke sued to reverse federal labor regulations that exempt home care agencies from having to pay overtime.”
Ms. Coke was 74.
The obituary made note of the letters sent by senators and members of the house asking U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis to eliminate the exemption.
The Senate letter mentioned Coke by name, noting: “Evelyn Coke, who took a case all the way to the Supreme Court, spent two decades working more than 40 hours a week caring for others,” the senators wrote. “Yet, when she suffered from kidney failure, she could not afford a health care worker to take care of her.”
“Evelyn Coke’s courage was the inspiration for the DCA’s campaign to fix the FLSA exemption,” says DCA Executive Director Leonila Vega. “Her passing renews our commitment to addressing this gross injustice, whereby millions of hard working Americans are left out of basic minimum labor protections. There is no better way to honor Evelyn Coke than for policymakers to improve the lives of home care workers by amending the companionship definition.”
As a DCA board member and Advocacy Committee co-chair, I will make sure that we continue the fight.
Your article about Evelyn Coke brought tears to my eyes. And yet we continue to hear that there is nothing wrong with our current healthcare system !
It is indeed very frustrating to see that we have the first opportunity to improve our healthcare sytstem and the real stories of how bad it is particularly for health care workers is not being heard. If we don’t take the opportunity to have in front of us, we may not have another opportunity in our lifetime to fix health care. Join us as we continue to support the cause of the direct care workers.
The Evelyn Cokes of the world are a beacon of light in this world. When I see the timidity of so-called liberal leaders in the fight to expand access to decent health care in the richest country in the world, I wish they could find some of Ms. Coke’s courage in their hearts.