The Supreme Court dealt a blow to basic fairness yesterday in Long Island Care at Home, Ltd. V. Coke, a decision that denies fundamental legal protections on minimum wage and overtime pay for home health care workers. In a unanimous, 9-0 decision, the Court upheld a 1975 Labor Department regulation exempting home health care workers employed by third party agencies from such provisions, stating it was within the power given to the DOL by Congress.
The 15-page opinion focuses exclusively on the extent of the Labor Department’s authority. There’s not even a mention of the hundreds of thousands of underpaid home care workers who often put in grueling hours doing physically and emotionally difficult work, and deserve to be paid fairly. In order for people like Evelyn Coke, a 73-year-old retiree who worked for more than twenty years as a home-care provider, to be eligible for overtime pay, Congress will have to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Evelyn Coke and countless others are waiting.
The SEIU released a statement on the decision:
“Today’s Supreme Court decision is a serious blow to efforts to ensure quality home care in America and underscores how unprepared we are to care for the millions of seniors who will want to live at home instead of institutions,” said SEIU Executive Vice President Gerry Hudson. “If we are to avert a home care crisis, we must invest in living wages and health care coverage for home care workers to build a stable, professional workforce to meet the needs of our growing elderly population...”
More than one million home care workers in the United States provide help with activities of daily living such as dressing, bathing, cooking, cleaning and transferring. But while home care work is listed as the fastest growing occupation by the Dept. of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, its low wages and lack of health insurance, sick and vacation time has led to high turnover in the industry. For the millions of seniors and people with disabilities who live independently at home instead of more costly institutions, these employment conditions have made it difficult to find and keep caregivers.