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Home care workers are currently excluded from FLSA because they are considered mere “companions,” an outdated ruling that fails to account for the health and personal care services they provide to elders and people with disabilities.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 »

Poems by Direct Care Workers: A Direct Care Worker Teaches the World to Love

Posted by on December 12th, 2011 at 11:34 pm | No Comments »

David Moreau

She knows how to turn your mother’s body
to slide the wet Attends from under her,
to clean her peri area, so the skin does not turn red
and every day your mother tells her the same story -
she saw Yul Brynner in the King and I on her honeymoon
and every day the direct care worker
imagines
this frail packet of bones
a young woman amazed by the bright lights
and her new life.

Later she finds herself singing,
getting to know you, getting to know all about you…
and its comforting
enough to make it through her shift.

Home Care Agency Owner Finds Caregiver Training Invaluable

Posted by on December 12th, 2011 at 11:34 pm | No Comments »

Bob Hebert

My wife and I own a non-medical home care agency that provides assistance with activities of daily living. Our clients are all private-pay, and our direct care workers are all caregivers or companions, not certified CNAs or home health aides.

Those caregivers are our business. Young or old, they have to have a passion and a heart for this kind of work. But they also have to be managed and supported and trained.

We offer our caregivers a lot of training, and we find they really appreciate the classes. Arizona is one of 23 states that do not have licensure requirements for home care. There is no federal training requirement for home care workers, and no state requirement either in our state, except a new one that just applies to people who work at agencies that serve Medicare or Medicaid recipients. But of course all home care workers need training, so most companies do it themselves. 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.

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.

Improving Care Quality by Developing Direct Care Worker Leaders

Posted by on November 29th, 2011 at 11:12 am | 2 Comments »

Beverly Faulkner

Developing direct care workers’ leadership skills can be an effective way of improving job and care quality in long-term care, according to early feedback from a collaboration between the Direct Care Alliance and four New York City-area nursing homes. The program is part of a pilot being conducted by DCA, the Beth Abraham Family of Health Services in New York City, and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

The project partners developed a new job description for certified nursing assistants (CNAs), creating an intermediary Senior Resident Care Associate position between the traditional CNA position and licensed nurses. The main goal is to develop direct care workers’ leadership skills so they can better advocate for improved working conditions, career advancement, and respect. The new position essentially creates a CNA career track, allowing seasoned nursing assistants to take on more responsibility and earn more pay without having to abandon the profession.

According to sociologist Deborah Little, PhD, the program’s evaluator, 30 CNA leaders—“the cream of the cream of the crop”—will be trained over the next three years. The first ten came from two of Beth Abe’s four homes. Each of the remaining two homes will contribute ten more. Training began for the first group this fall and begins for the last group next spring.

Continue reading »

Life Without Overtime: Averaging 60 to 80 Hours a Week

Posted by on November 29th, 2011 at 10:32 am | 1 Comment »

Home care worker Evelyn Coke (pictured) fought for the right to overtime pay.

The home care worker whose story you are about to read chose to remain anonymous for fear of losing her job.

In order for me to pull my weight, I average 120 to 160 hours every two weeks. My husband loads trucks 40 hours a week. It takes me almost twice as long to earn what he does. I can work in two weeks what some people work in an entire month, because we home care aides don’t get paid time and a half for overtime in Florida.

A couple days a week, I work from 8 in the morning until 8 at night. Sometimes I work from 8 at night until 3 in the afternoon. I spend a lot of my days just going from one client to another from early morning to late at night.

These days I’m not driving too far between clients, but there were times when I was traveling 30 to 50 miles a day to get from one client to the next. We used to get paid for that travel time and mileage, but now we don’t, and gas costs a lot more now than it used to. Continue reading »

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 »

Life Without Overtime: I Wish I Could Take Weekends Off

Posted by on November 8th, 2011 at 10:37 am | 1 Comment »

Home care worker Evelyn Coke fought for the right to overtime pay.

The home care worker whose story you are about to read chose to remain anonymous for fear of losing her job.

I receive $7.75 per hour. We home care workers don’t get paid overtime in Texas, so I usually work 50 or 60 hours a week. Sometimes it’s less, but sometimes it’s more. Usually I have to work every day of the week.

I work for two agencies now, one for 20 hours a week and the other for 20 or more, sometimes more than 40. But even when I worked for just one company, I didn’t get time and a half for all that overtime. I don’t get any benefits either.

I got into this work after I started taking care of my mom and my dad in 1987. My friend said, “Do you want to care for old people?” I said “No way! I don’t want to do that kind of job. I just want to take care of my mom and my dad.” Then I didn’t find another job. I told my friend I’d try it, but as soon as I found another job I’ll quit. But I never tried to find another job, because once I started doing this work I found out that I love it. Continue reading »

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