Posted by Elise Nakhnikian on August 10th, 2009 at 1:38 pm | 4 Comments »
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.”
Posted by Elise Nakhnikian on July 9th, 2009 at 1:48 pm | No Comments »
Readers of the DCA’s blog and newsletter are invited to share their thoughts and experiences about women and caregiving on the Feminism2.0 website, which is hosting an extended online discussion of the topic this month. A Twitter conversation on the same topic is also open to anyone who has or wants to start a Twitter account.
“We are looking for insights, comments, and expertise,” said a Feminism2.0 organizer in an email to the DCA. “We are looking for personal stories to illustrate the human experience of caregiving and to build a sense of solidarity among all caregivers.”
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Posted by Leonila Vega on June 17th, 2009 at 10:51 am | No Comments »
Paula Span
In When the Time Comes: Families with Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions, Paula Span uses her personal experience to gain insight into the struggles and rewards of family caregivers.
A journalist who spent half her career at the Washington Post and is now an adjunct professor at the Columbia School of Journalism, Paula used a similar structure to explore paid caregiving in “Marilyn Daniel’s Reward.” In that article, which was a cover story for the Washington Post Magazine, she used the story of one compassionate home health aide as her focus for a look at the profession as a whole. I got to know and respect her when she contacted me during her research for that article. You never know how things will turn out when a journalist calls for a quote, but Paula got the story just right.
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Posted by Elise Nakhnikian on June 8th, 2009 at 6:57 pm | 4 Comments »
Peggie Smith
“Federal reform is urgently needed to provide home care workers with the compensation and respect they deserve,” says Peggie Smith.
Smith, who is the Murray Family Professor of Law at the University of Iowa College of Law and a graduate of Harvard Law, is talking about a U.S. Supreme Court decision that excluded home care workers from protection under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The court said the workers were providing companionship services.
In Protecting Home Care Workers under the Fair Labor Standards Act, (PDF) the second in a series of Direct Care Alliance policy briefs, Smith says the decision “threatens to destabilize the home care industry, erode the precarious economic status of home care workers, and undermine the quality of care that they provide to home care clients.”
She outlines two approaches the federal government could take to reverse the ruling:
1. Amend the FLSA to explicitly include home care workers; and
2. Revise Department of Labor (DOL) regulations to significantly limit the reach of the companionship exemption.
Smith recommends that the government do both, with the DOL taking immediate action to revise the companionship exemption while Congress works to reverse the impact of the Supreme Court decision by passing the Fair Home Health Care Act. Continue reading »
Posted by Leonila Vega on February 10th, 2009 at 12:50 pm | 8 Comments »
Leonila Vega
A room full of economists and researchers.
That’s what you wish you for when you’re an advocate for low-income women who are in dire need of supports: A room full of economists who can help you explain to President Obama, his cabinet, and our national and state legislators why they need to stop ignoring direct care workers. Maybe “ignore” is too strong a word, but it’s frustrating to see no mention of direct care workers in the plans being made to stimulate the economy or fund Medicaid, when direct care workers who are being paid a family-sustaining wage are just what our economy needs.
Every night, I read and watch news about powerful banks getting billions of dollars to bail them out, car company execs landing in DC in their private jets to collect billions, and nearly another trillion from the treasury being allocated for other projects. I wonder, what about the direct care workers who toil daily to prepare meals, give showers, perform transfers, drive people to the doctor and church, and otherwise keep families together in their communities?
What about the direct care workers – most of them women — who have to decide whether to pay the telephone bill, the rent or the doctor’s bill to make sure their families can make it one more month without losing basics such as housing? Never mind health care, which so many can’t afford.
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Posted by Bridget Siljander on January 7th, 2009 at 4:23 pm | No Comments »
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:
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Posted by Elise Nakhnikian on December 15th, 2008 at 2:32 pm | 5 Comments »
The Direct Care Alliance has sent a letter to President-elect Barack Obama (PDF), asking him to include direct care jobs in the economic stimulus package he plans to institute soon after taking office.
”While we support investment in basic infrastructure and ‘green jobs,’ we also emphasize the strong need to generate ‘pink jobs’ that create or improve opportunities for women,” the letter says. “Many of these jobs are in the care sector of our economy, and a number of economists have emphasized the long-run benefits of public investment in that sector.”
Posted by Bridget Siljander on December 2nd, 2008 at 1:55 pm | No Comments »
I attended a fabulous conference on women and work at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Initially, I was thrilled to attend because I am curious about women-related issues. I’ve raised my 10-year old daughter single-handedly while putting myself through college as a direct care worker. I have a sense of pride that as a woman that I have been able to accomplish this without losing my enthusiasm for what I do every day. It fascinates me to learn about how other women handle their multiple responsibilities of work, family, and community. Where I live, many women stay home with their children, sometimes even after their youngest is in school full-time. I have wondered about what motivates women to make decisions about work and career.
I wasn’t sure about how the topic related to me as a direct care worker advocate, however. In my mind, the only connection I was making to direct care worker (DCW) issues was: most direct care workers are women. But attending Women & Work: Choices & Constraints made me think about other issues.
For instance, not only are most DCWs women, but they are underpaid, under-recognized, and not invested in as professionals. Most do not earn a livable income or have health insurance. They have almost no representation — only a few passionate advocates compared to their vast numbers. Most have no job security. If they experience a personal or family emergency, such as an accident or illness, many can’t afford to miss work. If they did, they could face a complete breakdown of their already fragile situation.
Obviously, the struggles of DCWs are huge. Let me be direct. Many social factors come into play that create this perfect storm scenario: discrimination against women, discrimination against low-wage workers, discrimination against people with disabilities and people who are aging. These are some of the broader social issues that exist.
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