Setback on pay for home care workers

Stung by a Supreme Court ruling, worker advocates said Monday they will lobby Congress to extend federal minimum wage and overtime protections to an estimated 1.4 million home care workers.

Such workers have been exempt from federal pay protections for more than 30 years under a Labor Department rule that classifies them with baby-sitters as providers of "companionship" services. They help elderly and disabled people dress, bathe, prepare meals and take medications.

The court, in a unanimous decision Monday, let the exemption stand.

"Denying minimum wage and overtime to home care workers hurts both caregivers and the people they care for," said Gerry Hudson, executive vice president of Service Employees International Union, which represents 400,000 U.S. home care workers.

"It hurts our efforts to build the stable professional workforce needed to meet the growing demand for home care as the Baby Boomers age and the U.S. elderly population doubles in the coming years," Hudson said.

The decision represents a victory for home care agencies and government officials who argued that changing the rule would drive up costs, straining government reimbursement programs, forcing some providers out of business and jeopardizing care.

Yet even agency representatives said the court ruling does nothing to address the problem of improving working conditions for employees who provide vital services for low pay and few if any benefits.

"That issue doesn't go away," said William Dombi, vice president for law at the National Association for Home Care and Hospice. "It's time now for the businesses to combine with the workers and find solutions to the problem that led to the inability to pay overtime in the first place."

The plaintiff in the case is Evelyn Coke, a 73-year-old Jamaican immigrant employed for more than two decades by a Long Island, N.Y.-based home care agency. She sometimes worked 70 hours a week without overtime pay, including 24-hour shifts when she stayed overnight, until an accident forced her to quit six years ago.

According to a brief filed by AARP, the typical home care worker is a single mother between the ages of 25 and 54. Annual pay ranges between $16,750 and $20,760 for full-time work, but many work part time.

Turnover is high, and there aren't enough workers to meet sharply increasing demand, agencies and worker advocates agree.

Fourteen states including Illinois require home care agencies to meet state minimum wage and overtime requirements that in many cases exceed federal minimums.

Catherine Ruckelshaus of the National Employment Law Project said that undermines the argument that ending the federal exemption would be too costly. "If you're not willing to pay minimum wage for this kind of an important service, I think there's something seriously wrong with our society," Ruckelshaus said.

Advocates said they will lobby a new administration to change the rule or persuade Congress to act.

"Congress could clearly express an intention to cover home care workers," said Craig Becker, SEIU general counsel, who was Coke's lead attorney.

He said the court's decision will worsen the worker shortage by placing the home care occupation "outside the margin of work entitled to fair compensation."

But agency representatives said federal regulation is unnecessary.

"The market dictates what good providers have to pay to get quality employees," said Ron Ford, chief operating officer of Chicago-based Help At Home, which employs about 9,000 workers in nine states. "Each provider has to find a way to make themselves attractive to employees."

He said Help At Home pays more than the local minimum wage in each of the states in which it operates, including Illinois, where the agency's starting wage is about $7.50 per hour.

Help At Home workers in Illinois are represented by SEIU.
Source : http://www.chicagotribune.com