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By Joe Maniscalco

Intro. 615 — the bill aimed at freeing local home health aides in New York City from mandatory 24-hour workdays — has enough votes to sail through the New York City Council if it were put on the floor for a vote today. All Speaker Adrienne Adams has to do is get out of the way and let it happen.

That’s according to Council Member Chris Marte [D-1st District] — lead sponsor of the “No More 24” bill — who on Wednesday once again called on the speaker to put Intro. 615 on the floor for a vote during a May Day rally held outside the gates of City Hall.

“Today, we’re asking for democracy to happen,” Marte said. “I talk to all my colleagues in the City Council. They say if this bill comes to the floor, they will vote ‘yes.’ And so why, after two years since its introduction, since a hunger strike that lasted a week, since countless marches, rallies and demonstrations — why has this bill not passed?

The answer supporters of the “No More 24” bill insist, is naked greed and a governmental power structure that’s “colluding” with big business against the interests of working class people.

“This systemic abuse happens every single day,” Assembly Member Harvey Epstein [D-74th District] told the roughly 200 demonstrators who turned out for the May Day rally. “Workers have a billion dollars stolen from them by our government that forces them to work 24-hours and only [pays them] for thirteen — that system is not right. That is not justice for a worker population who are almost exclusively immigrant women of color. We know how abusive this is, and it is our responsibility in Albany and City Hall to make it stop. It is our fight for these workers — it is our obligation to stand with workers.”

Fellow Assembly Member Ron Kim [D-40th District] called May Day and the start of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month the “perfect time and place to tell the powers of the city that we have had enough.”

“We have had enough of modern day slavery,” the Queens County representative said. “We have had enough of exploited workers, greedy corporations, insurance companies taking advantage of our city and state — and we’re here to say no.”

The “No More 24” bill currently has just 14 co-sponsors in the New York City Council where it sits in the Civil Service and Labor Committee chaired by Council Member Carmen De La Rosa [D-10th District].

Similar legislation seeking to limit the number of hours home health aides can work also continues to languish in the New York State Legislature.

Speaker Adams has long maintained the funding and regulatory framework of home health care is determined by the state through Medicaid the NYS Department of Labor regulations and policies — and therefore, not a city issue.

A City Council spokesperson tells Work-Bites, “Arguments to the contrary that assert this city legislation could alter state policy are either misinformed or intentionally misleading and irresponsible.”

“The Council passed a Resolution last month and included in its state budget priorities to make clear our position that the state should enact legislation and policy changes to ensure home care workers are appropriately paid for their work and protected,” the spokesperson said in an email. “We implore these advocates and workers against 24-hour home care shifts to join us and make their feelings heard on the state level, where a solution that improves the conditions of home care workers and maintains care for individuals with disabilities and other significant needs can be achieved.”

Wednesday’s “No More 24” rally had intergenerational support from numerous grassroots organizations, worker advocacy groups and political clubs. Some of them included the Flushing Workers Center, Downtown Independent Democrats, Sunrise Movement NYC, Youth Against Sweatshops, New Kings Democrats, Cross-Union Retirees Organizing Committee [CROC], and Physicians for a National Health Program, NY Metro Chapter, among others.

“Look around you today,” Council Member Marte said. “We have home care workers. We have bakers. We have students. We have delivery workers. We have retail workers. We have retirees. We have people from every single industry standing side by side to make sure that justice and dignity is served to everyday workers.”

Joya, a fourth-year medical student in New York City and former home health aide, highlighted the detrimental impact 24-hour shifts have on those subjected to them.

“Many studies have shown sleep deprived providers make more mistakes and have slower reaction times,” she said. “So who are these 24-hour shifts for? Who are they protecting? Not us. Not our patients. Not anybody in this city. The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene of New York City itself has released multiple bulletins detailing the importance of adequate sleep over the years — and yet the same city continues to allow workers to be beaten down by 24 [hour shifts] with no end in sight — and it is unconscionable.”

As Work-Bites has previously reported, nothing advances out of committee in the New York City Council without Speaker Adams’ say so — that’s the “protocol.” Intro. 1099 — the  measure seeking to protect retiree healthcare from privatization — has also be sitting around Council Member De La Rosa’s Civil ServiceLabor Committee because that’s exactly where Speaker Adams wants it to stay.

On May Day, New York City municipal retirees fighting the ongoing campaign to push them into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage health insurance plan expressed solidarity with home health aides fighting to end mandatory 24-hour workdays.

“We are in this fight with you,” retired school teacher and CROC organizer Sarah Shapiro said. “We are also in our own fight to make sure that the city does not diminish our public Medicare benefits. We're not only fighting for Medicare for ourselves — we're fighting for Medicare for all of you, [too], because if we don't save our public Medicare, it won't be around when you retire. We are here in solidarity with our brothers and sisters who are fighting out here to be paid for decent hours.”

It's unbelievable, Shapiro added, that more than 100 years after American workers finally won the eight-hour workday from the bosses — elderly home care attendants in New York City are still being forced to work round-the-clock shifts.

“What kind of world is this?” she said. 

Grand Street Democrats President Marion Riedel took further note of the overwhelming older immigrant women of color at the rally who are being forced to work 24-hour workdays as home care aides. 

“What I want to say is that you're all women that I see,” Riedel said. “And you're almost all women who immigrated here — and do you think if the hands lifted were white men that we'd be standing here fighting for this on this May Day? I don't think so.”