Archive for ‘DCA initiatives’

An Honest Day’s Work Deserves Fair Pay

Posted by on January 29th, 2012 at 11:48 am | 4 Comments »

A home care workers explains why we need to enact the proposed home care rule

Mohan Varghese

It is only just to give home health care workers the basic rights that are guaranteed by the Fair Labor Standards Act.  If you look at any other job that’s non-salaried, they have those rights. If you work at a fast food place flipping burgers, you’re getting all those requirements met, but if you are providing home care you don’t.

I have worked three-plus years at a nursing home as a certified nurse aide and three years as a home health aide caring for a spinal cord injury patient. I do all the things in home care that I did in the nursing home and more. Some of the extras are simple tasks like cleaning and cooking. Others are much complex medical tasks that were done by licensed nurses in the nursing home, like urinary catheterization and administration of shots and other medications. Continue reading »

Home Care Workers Talk About the Proposed Rule

Posted by on January 24th, 2012 at 10:27 am | 5 Comments »

We asked some of our home care worker members and allies how they felt about the proposed rule to extend Fair Labor Standards Act protections to home care workers. Here’s what they said:

Carolyn Gay

Carolyn Gay, CNA and home care worker

I have been a CNA since 1992, working in private duty with some of the most wonderful patients and families. I am on Social Security now, but I continue to work as a CNA to supplement my income and because I love my patients.

As a CNA, I am a trained professional. I am required by law to be certified and to maintain my skills. I incur the expenses for that training, yet I do not get paid for my travel time, nor am I assured minimum wage. If I worked more than 40 hours a week, I would not get time and a half for that extra time.

As the support system for our patients, their families, the RNs and the doctors, we have earned the right to a living wage. Fast food workers are guaranteed minimum wage and overtime pay, but we caregivers are not. Continue reading »

Celebrating Dr. King’s Legacy

Posted by on January 17th, 2012 at 10:42 am | No Comments »

As Martin Luther King. Jr. Day approached, we here at the Direct Care Alliance found ourselves reflecting on Dr. King’s influence on our lives and work and wondering what he would think about today’s campaign for better jobs for direct care workers. We asked some of our current and past board members to share their thoughts about that.

Here’s what they had to say:

Economic justice for today’s version of “the help”

Almost 50 years ago, when Dr. King went to the Washington Mall with hundreds of thousands of people, there were thousands of domestic workers in the crowd. The domestic worker of the 1950s and ‘60s could be compared to the home care worker of today. They did the cooking and cleaning. They cared for the babies. They cared for the owners of the house when they became sick. And most of them—about 99 percent of them in the South—were African American.

These workers were so closely involved with the lives of the families they worked for that they weren’t even called workers. They were called “the help.” They didn’t get a salary. They just took whatever the owner of the house decided they deserved for the time they worked—and they worked from sunup to sundown. That same way of thinking led to the so-called “companionship exemption” that denies us home care workers the right to Fair Labor Standards Act protections.

Continue reading »

Comment Update: Early Feedback on DOL’s Proposed Home Care Rule

Posted by on January 17th, 2012 at 10:38 am | No Comments »

The comments on the Department of Labor’s proposed rule to extend Fair Labor Standards Act protection to home care workers are surging in faster than DOL staff can post them.

Negative feedback seems to be in the majority at the moment, but there are plenty of eloquent comments from supporters of the proposed rule. We’ve copied a few of them below in hopes that they’ll inspire you to send in your comment, if you haven’t already.

To see more of the comments that posted so far, go to the comments page, click on “View Docket Folder,” check “public submission,” and click on a submitter’s name or a blue HTML button.

To submit your own comment, click on one of the blue “comment due” links if you’re already on the comment page. Or go to the Take Action box on our Respect for Home Care Workers page and download our comment submission guidelines.

Dear Secretary Solis,

Many of my friends and family depend on home care workers to help them live at home. I support the extension of minimum wage and overtime protections provided by the Fair Labor Standards Act to all home care workers. These workers take care of the most important people in their employers’ lives. I know that when workers are treated well they have a better relationship with their employers, which results in better quality care. Thank you for your leadership in moving this proposal forward.

Sincerely,

Ariana Jostad-Laswell Continue reading »

New DCA Resources Make It Easy to Comment on Proposed Rule

Posted by on January 10th, 2012 at 1:50 pm | No Comments »

By proposing to grant home care workers basic labor rights, the Department of Labor (DOL) has taken an important step to correct the longstanding injustice done to these crucial workers. Now it’s up to us to make sure that happens, by registering our support for DOL’s proposed rule to extend Fair Labor Standards Act protections to home care workers.

The comments DOL receives will be a major factor in its decision whether or not to enact the proposed rule, so it’s important that they hear from as many supporters as possible. To help you submit your comment, DCA has prepared new resources that guide you through process step by step.

Please visit the Take Action box on our Respect for Home Care Workers page and add your voice to the growing chorus. Tell DOL to do the right thing for home care workers and the people who rely on them!

The public comment period ends on February 27.

DCA to Build on Momentum in 2012

Posted by on January 3rd, 2012 at 1:41 pm | 2 Comments »

DCA Board Chair Tracy Dudzinski

Dear Friends,

Thanks to the hard work of our direct care worker leaders and allies, we made a lot of progress in 2011, and there are many opportunities for continued success in 2012.

As DCA’s board chair, I am incredibly proud of the leadership and vision of DCA’s executive director, Leonila Vega, as well as DCA’s staff, members, volunteers, and allies. 2011 was a year of many milestones for the direct care workforce and the Direct Care Alliance, and I’d like to share some of the highlights with you. They only scratch the surface of what we accomplished in 2011, but they’re proof that our movement is growing stronger and direct care workers’ voices are being heard. I also want to tell you about some of the things we have planned for 2012.

The most exciting developments in 2011 were the responses we got from both the U.S. Department of Labor and Congress to the persistent advocacy of DCA and its allies to extend basic labor protections to home care workers. Just last month, DOL proposed a rule that would extend minimum wage and overtime protections to home care workers. And earlier last year, the Direct Care Job Quality Improvement Act was introduced by Senator Casey (PA) in the Senate and Representative Sánchez (CA) in the House. Continue reading »

DOL Now Accepting Comments on Proposed Home Care Rule

Posted by on December 27th, 2011 at 1:52 pm | 1 Comment »

DCA Board Chair Tracy Dudzinski (fourth from right) stood behind the President as he announced the proposed rule.

The new rule proposed by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) to extend basic labor protections to home care workers is now open for public comment.

DOL will collect comments on the rule for the next two months. It will then weigh all the comments it has received and decide whether to amend and/or enact the rule.Opponents are already organizing to tell DOL not to enact it, so workers and our allies must rally as well, to make sure that our voices are heard and this injustice is overturned.

As President Obama made clear when he announced the proposed rule (see video below), DOL wants to end this injustice, but it needs your support. It takes just a few minutes to help ensure that home care workers get the basic rights they deserve.

Please submit your comment now if you’re ready, or check back with us next week, when we’ll have easily customized comment letter templates and other materials to help guide you through the process.

To comment, visit our advocacy center, go to Take Action, and click on the link that leads to the comment submission page.

A Landmark Day for Home Care Workers

Posted by on December 20th, 2011 at 12:03 am | 5 Comments »

Last Thursday was a big day in the history of the fight for direct care worker rights, and I was lucky enough to be right there in Washington, DC, representing DCA and my fellow home care workers when President Obama made the announcement. (That’s me in the video, right behind the President’s left shoulder). The President was telling the press about a proposed rule that would finally give home care workers Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) protections.

I felt truly honored and humbled as I headed in to the Department of Labor on Thursday morning and met the other home care workers who were there for the announcement. We got to meet the staff who had made this proposed rule change a reality, who are all very passionate about correcting this injustice against home care workers. It was strange because they treated us like royalty. I told them that I wanted to thank them for all their hard work, but they kept saying we workers were the ones who deserved to be thanked for all that we do.  Continue reading »

Home Care Workers Poised to Win Basic Labor Protections

Posted by on December 15th, 2011 at 2:07 pm | 2 Comments »

The fight to win basic labor protections for home care workers may soon be won, thanks to a proposed rule announced today by President Obama and U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis. The rule would extend minimum wage and overtime pay guarantees and other protections to these workers under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). 

Home care workers are currently excluded from FLSA because they are considered mere “companions,” an outdated ruling that fails to account for the health and personal care services they provide to elders and people with disabilities. “Extending minimum wage and overtime protections to home care workers has been the Direct Care Alliance’s flagship issue since the Supreme Court ruled against Evelyn Coke,” says Leonila Vega, executive director of the Direct Care Alliance (DCA). “We are delighted that the end of this injustice is in sight.” Continue reading »

Huffington Post Shines Light on FLSA Companionship Exemption

Posted by on December 6th, 2011 at 11:24 am | No Comments »

“If you’re in this job for money, you’re in it for the wrong reason, but I’d like to see that change someday,” says a Florida home care worker in Healthcare Workers on Verge of Winning Equal Rights, Higher Pay. The December 1 Huffington Post article looks at the companionship exemption that denies home care workers overtime pay and other basic protections under the Fair Labor Standards Act, explaining that the White House is considering a rule that would end the exemption.

Paul Sonn, legal co-director of the National Employment Law Project, told writer Dave Jamieson, who covers workplace issues for the influential blog, that undoing the companionship exemption is “a really important change to build a foundation for improving these jobs.” Jamieson also quotes Direct Care Alliance Policy Director David Ward, who says the high turnover rates for home care aides prove that the current system of low pay and few benefits doesn’t work. “We need to make greater investment in the workers” says Ward. “There’s going to be an increasing demand.”

The Florida worker, who recently contributed a DCA blog post about how her lack of overtime pay and pay for travel time between clients affects her and her family, told Jamieson she has to work twice as many hours as her husband to earn the same amount he does. “My life pretty much revolves around my job,” she said.

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