What I Do
IBEW keeps San Francisco's cable cars running.
IBEW keeps San Francisco's cable cars running.
Home care providers are vital to our communities--they care for individuals with disabilities and the elderly, and their work allows the growing number of Americans who rely upon their services to remain in their own homes with dignity and independence.
Despite their valuable service, many home care providers are excluded from basic minimum wage and overtime protections. In 1974, Congress amended the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to cover domestic service workers, but the Nixon administration undermined Congress’s purpose by issuing a regulation that exempted most home care workers from these new protections. Then, in 2007, a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court denied overtime pay to Evelyn Coke, a home care provider working more than 70 hours per week for a home care agency, based on the 1974 regulation, while making clear the U.S. Department of Labor has authority to issue a new regulation that narrows the category of home care workers excluded from basic wage and hour protections.
Recognizing the important and vital role home care providers play in our society, President Barack Obama’s Labor Department proposed a new rule last December that would extend minimum wage and overtime protection under FLSA to many home care providers across the country. We support the efforts of President Obama and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis to provide home care workers with basic wage and hour protections.
The Obama administration’s proposed rule not only would level the playing field for nearly 2 million home care providers, a vast majority of whom are women, but also would ensure that Americans who are elderly or living with disabilities continue to receive quality care in their own homes. The work of home care providers should be protected and rewarded.
We urge the Labor Department to issue the final rule and give America’s home care providers the fair shot that every worker deserves. Home care providers should not have to wait any longer for fairness.
