Ban the 24-Hour Workday! | The Country

The issue isn’t just wage theft—or exploitation. Sleep-deprived people make mistakes that can undermine the care of their patients. Given the lack of sleep and the requirements of the job—like counting out medicine or cooking on a hot stove—accidents can easily happen.

Can anyone imagine a security guard whose supervisor schedules them for a 24-hour shift—but then tells him that even though he will be at the site for 24 hours, he will only be paid for 13 hours? The difference here is gender. Home health aides in New York are predominantly immigrant women. Their plight is part of the long history in the United States of wages stolen from women—especially women of color.

Those defending the 13-Hour Rule assert that a 24-hour shift provides flexibility for staffing agencies. Banning the practice will raise the cost of care. Abolishing the rule would indeed increase the cost of care, as these workers are currently toiling at below minimum wage. But the current rule puts the needs of the agencies over those of patients and workers. Instead, the agencies should be required to provide proper care to people who hire them—and fair wages to those who provide that care to their clients.

Activists say one reason for the long-standing abuse lies in the lucrative confidential contracts between the agencies and the insurance companies and state providers like Medicaid that pay them. These contracts are awarded to agencies in a closed bid process. According to the Empire Center for Public Policy, New York State’s funding for personal care for the elderly and disabled is eight times higher than the national average. Fraud is rampant, and profits flow freely to insurance companies and agencies while the labor force is abused.

1199 SEIU, the union representing home attendants, should be fighting harder to end the 24-hour workday. But its efforts on the issue have been minimal, despite the union’s top spot in the lobbying dollars race in New York. Last year, the health aides who work under a binding arbitration clause battled their own union—objecting to the result of the mediation and arbitration process against 42 home health agencies that delivered an average payment of only $250 per worker when many were owed thousands of dollars. The February 2022 award covered eight years of labor and approximately 120,000 workers. The union touted the settlement, noting that paying more would have put home health agencies out of business. Which raises the question: Whose side is SEIU on? The union’s primary focus should be their workers’ wages and well-being—not the profit margins of the staffing agencies.

Commenting on Intro.175, a spokesperson for 1199SIEU stated that “city legislation…needs to be aligned with the state budget process to prevent immediate disruption of services and jobs. Homecare is funded by the state, not the city, and absent the necessary funding to convert 24-hour shifts into split shifts, it risks nursing home placement for thousands of homecare clients and subsequent job losses for their caregivers.” But without the legislation, where is the urgency to make the budget changes?

Further delaying justice for the workers is the City Council’s slow-walking of a bill limiting shifts to 12 hours in New York City to circumvent the state’s 13-Hour Rule. Speaker Adams has not made bringing the bill to a vote a priority, voicing concern about “pitting groups against one another.” The concept of pitting disabled people against the home health agencies is preposterous. People with disabilities deserve proper care, and the home health agencies’ profits should not come at the expense of mandated and needed care for our fellow citizens.

After the hearing on Intro.175, interested groups, including 1199SEIU, negotiated to amend the bill. But even the amended version continues to be held back from a vote. The groups organizing the protests and picketing around New York have been doing so since 2015. How long before their efforts will be rewarded with reasonable legal protection for our vulnerable patients and workers?

Let’s ban the 24-hour workday, pay New York’s home health aides for their work, assign them humane schedules, and allow them the dignity and respect they deserve.