Archive for ‘legislation and regulation’

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.

Judge Temporarily Blocks 20% Pay Cut for Family Caregivers

Posted by on December 6th, 2011 at 10:58 am | No Comments »

As home health agency owner Tim Plant explained in a September 20 DCA blog post, Minnesota’s new budget included a 20 percent pay cut for personal care assistants who provide care to a relative. The cut was to have gone into effect October 1, but a dedicated group of activists worked hard to convince lawmakers and Department of Human Services administrative staff that it should not be enacted. The activists succeeded in getting the cut tabled, but more action is needed to ensure that it is permanently defeated, as Vice President Brigette Menger-Anderson of the Direct Support Professional Association of Minnesota (DSPAM) explains in  DSPAM’s newsletter. See below for the beginning of her article and a link to the rest.

In the last newsletter, we provided you with a legislative update, focusing on the unprecedented 20% rate cut for providers who were billing for PCA services provided by caregivers of family members. This statute deeply impacted the disability and DSP community immediately. Many providers reduced the wages of their workers to compensate for the reduction. Some DSPs recently blogged on the DCA that they are now down to $7.75 an hour and can’t even afford the gas to get to provide the supports that are needed. DSPs wrote into DSPAMs Facebook page and shared that they live in small rural towns and feel that it is unlikely to get someone else to fill these shifts and that the providers are banking on the genuine caring and giving nature of DSPs to continue to do their jobs.

What we need for our legislators and the general public to understand is that direct support workers are provided a service that is the least costly and offers the most opportunity for dignity and independence to the individuals who receive direct care services. Read the rest in the Winter 2011 I Am DSPAM newsletter, starting at the top of the 11th page.

Strengthening Social Security to Improve Direct Care Workers’ Retirement Security

Posted by on November 14th, 2011 at 9:38 pm | No Comments »

Download a PDF or Flash version of the brief

Recent proposals to cut Social Security benefits would threaten the already fragile retirement security of direct care workers, according to Maintaining and Improving Social Security for Direct Care Workers. Instead, argues the 16-page issue brief, the program can and should be strengthened in ways that will increase retirement security for these workers.

Author Shawn Fremstad of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) explains why Social Security is particularly important to direct care workers, who are “among the most poorly compensated and economically insecure workers in the United States.” Only about one in every four direct care workers have employer-provided retirement benefits, says the brief, and few can afford to amass any other savings, so the great majority rely solely on Social Security if they become disabled or retire. But workers who have put in a lifetime of poorly paid work as caregivers are eligible only for extremely modest Social Security benefits. Continue reading »

Protecting the Social Safety Net

Posted by on November 8th, 2011 at 10:32 am | 1 Comment »

CNA and DCA member Kelly Gessner testifying at a Senate briefing last week.

UPDATE: Help us fight to preserve these crucial programs by emailing your elected representatives. Our action alert makes it easy to send them a letter.

Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are under attack. Over the past several months, these social safety programs have become the focus of a political battle over what our government needs to do to create jobs and stimulate our struggling economy. This is alarming because these programs are fundamental to the already shaky economic security of our seniors, people with disabilities, and low-income families—a group that includes many direct care workers and their families, as well as most of the people they assist.

Unfortunately, the debate about whether to cut social safety net programs is being driven by politics, not the realities that millions of low-income families and individuals face every day. The Direct Care Alliance and many of our allies are waging campaigns to preserve these crucial programs. Continue reading »

Demonizing Caregivers No Way to Reduce Elder Abuse, says DCA Issue Brief

Posted by on October 25th, 2011 at 3:37 am | 1 Comment »

“The personal, often intimate nature of caregiving relationships can make it difficult to define, detect, and deter the abuse of elders and people with disabilities by the caregivers they rely on. Nonetheless, there are a number of steps that employers and policymakers can take to support good care and prevent abuse,” says No Excuse for Abuse, the ninth in a series of Direct Care Alliance policy briefs.

Arguing that we cannot reduce abuse until we understand its root causes, the nine-page issue brief looks at what we know—and what we don’t know—about how and why care recipients get abused by their caregivers. Author Elise Nakhnikian notes that the great majority of abuse appears to be committed not by paid professionals but by informal caregivers, usually close family members, and that it is often caused by “complex and stressful dynamics between caregiver and care recipient, with one party’s actions and attitudes affecting the other and creating a ‘reactive pattern or feedback loop.’”

Simply blaming and punishing those who abuse will not solve the problem, she writes. In fact, demonizing caregivers can make things worse, pushing the issue even further underground and tarnishing the reputation of an honorable profession. Continue reading »

Working for Less than Minimum Wage

Posted by on October 18th, 2011 at 9:02 am | 6 Comments »

Clara Glenn

I’ve been doing home care work for 30-some years, and I love it. I tell everybody I wouldn’t trade it for the world. You have to have a heart to do this work. You can’t just do it for no reason. You have to be dedicated. I always put God first in my life, and that carries me through.

About 15 years ago, I worked for a home care agency that paid less than minimum wage. The minimum was $5.15 at the time, and we were making $4.90. I think that was a reason a lot of the girls left. We stayed as long as we could and then we went on to other places.

I stayed because of the clients. I liked them and they liked me. We made our own little family, and that meant more to me than the money. As long as they were getting good care, that was really what mattered to me. Even now, some of their grandchildren send me Christmas cards and birthday cards and when they get married they call me up. They were like family, and I knew they needed help. Continue reading »

Stumping for the Direct Care Job Quality Improvement Act

Posted by on October 11th, 2011 at 9:29 am | 1 Comment »

Joan Leah

When I returned home after attending this year’s Voices Institute, I made a commitment to myself. I committed to not waste the investment made in me by DCA; the confidence placed in me by my association, the Florida Professional Association of Care Givers, when they recommended me for the training; or the commitment I made to my peers during my time at the VI. I vowed to advocate for the changes our long-term care system so desperately needs, starting with the Direct Care Job Quality Improvement Act.

I hope hearing about my journey to carry that message to the Hill will inspire you, and perhaps arm you with tips you can use to make your own journey. The main one is: DON’T GIVE UP! Getting through to your legislators takes work and persistence, but you can find many helpful tools on the DCA website, and DCA staff and Voices Institute alumni are here to help too.  Continue reading »

DCA, Allies Host Senate Briefing on the Companionship Exemption

Posted by on October 11th, 2011 at 1:56 am | 3 Comments »

Last Thursday, direct care workers and their allies met with Senate staffers to educate them about the companionship exemption and the negative impact that it is having on home- and community-based services. The companionship exemption exempts home care workers from minimum wage and overtime protections under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. Twenty-one states currently offer basic labor protections to home care workers, but workers in the other 29 are without protection unless the federal law is changed. The Senate staff in attendance heard from direct care workers, an employer, and health and labor experts about why it’s important for home care workers to be covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act. Continue reading »

Proposed Bill Would Deny Basic Rights to Home Care Workers

Posted by on October 4th, 2011 at 8:27 am | 4 Comments »

Download the DCA press release.

H.R. 3066, a bill proposed by Rep. Lee Terry (R-NE), would destabilize a crucial workforce by ensuring that home care workers continue to be denied minimum wage and overtime protections under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

Personal and home care aides constitute one of the ten fastest-growing employment categories in the nation. They provide a critical service to frail elders and other people with disabilities, yet they average less than $10 an hour and typically receive few or no benefits such as health insurance or paid time off. Last year, their wages actually declined slightly from the year before. These conditions contribute to the profession’s high turnover and job vacancy rates, which threaten the continuity of care that is key to care quality. Continue reading »

Why We Home Care Aides Should Get Overtime Pay

Posted by on September 26th, 2011 at 10:53 pm | 4 Comments »

Ja'Ray Gamble

I believe that we home care workers should get overtime pay. I work a lot of overtime, but I do not get paid for it.

Caregiving is my calling here on earth. I’m a giver. I love this work, and I am absolutely in love with my company: They’ve helped me a lot. That’s my family. But they can’t afford to pay me overtime when they don’t get reimbursed for overtime pay by the government. Janis Durick (owner of From the Heart  Companion Services, the agency I work for) is unable to authorize overtime for her workers due to the lack of the “helping hand” of government reimbursements. If  she were able to provide her workers with overtime, she would do so in a heartbeat.  She has such a great love for all of us. She’s simply doing what she is able to, and so am I.

I first heard about being a direct care worker through my mother. She had worked with From The Heart for almost three years until she lost her client, who was very special to her. She is still grieving, but she plans to go back to work soon. Continue reading »

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