Legislation Set to End Round-the-Clock Home Care Shifts
Home health care worker Dixa Valerio worked 24-hour shifts for eight years caring for aged and sick New Yorkers. The work was grueling and took her away from her own family. Nearly half the time on the job, Valerio was working for free, not by her own choosing but because of state law. She lost close to $27,500 over the years. Now lawmakers are trying to change that and bring equity to an industry fighting for fair compensation.
Earlier this month, New York State Assemblyman Harvey Epstein introduced legislation which promises to end 24-hour shifts for home care workers. It would cap their shifts at 12 hours and the workweek at 50 hours. They will be paid for every hour worked.
Under current state law, home health workers who are on the job for 24 hours only need to be paid for 13 of those hours, because the remainder of the time they are supposedly eating and sleeping and this does not constitute work. In the industry, this is referred to as the “13-hour rule.”
“If someone needs 24-hour care, it’s not like the worker is going to get 11 hours off a day,” Epstein said. “That’s why they’re there. That’s just ridiculous to assume that people can get 5 hours of sleep, that they will get lunches and breaks.”
An aging population makes this work vital. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) predicts the home health care industry can expect a 36.6 percent increase in job openings over the next nine years. But workplace hours and conditions create an industry where workers “continue to provide worsening care and continue to be abused by a system that doesn’t pay them for 11 hours of their workday,” Epstein said. A majority of these workers are immigrant women of color.
This bill would end the 24-hour workday by splitting shifts into 12 hours. It is currently under review of the NYS Labor Committee and is likely to pass in the fall Assembly. The issue advocates found with the bill is that it may receive pushback from upstate New Yorkers. The bill would create complexity because of an already existing shortage of home care workers upstate. Reducing their hours would contribute to the problem. It would also result in higher costs of home care for some patients.
Carmela Huang, Supervising Attorney at The Legal Aid Society, has practiced workers’ rights litigation for the past decade. Huang considers the bill necessary from a public health perspective.
“So many scientific studies now show the irreversible harms of sleep deprivation that don’t even come close to the deprivation that these workers experience,” Huang said. “Some of them have been doing this work for over 10 years and basically haven’t gotten sleep for 10 years.” On their days off workers still cannot sleep — for some this can extend months beyond retirement.
Valerio said if she could change one thing about her workplace it would be to end 24-hour shifts.
Her comment on the legislation? “Perfecto.”
