‘Modern Day Slavery’ Keeps Getting a Pass in New York City
Council Member and No More 24 Act sponsor Chris Marte addresses a rally for New York City home health aides back in May. Photo by Joe Maniscalco
By Joe Maniscalco
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to include a statement from the Aint I a Woman Campaign.
There’s a very old and somewhat esoteric proverb you might have heard that goes something like this: S—t rolls downhill. And in this case, New York City home health aides, predominantly elderly immigrant women of color performing indispensable jobs, are the ones standing at the bottom of that hill — and they’ve been there for a very long time now.
Most everyone involved in the struggle surrounding New York City Council Intro. 175A — the No More 24 Act — concedes the ongoing system subjecting home health aides to 24-hour work days and only paying them for just about half the time — is a travesty.
City Council Member Chris Marte [D-1st District], lead sponsor of the No More 24 bill, calls subjecting home health aides to 24-hour workdays “modern-day slavery.”
The New York State Labor Department conducted a four-year probe of this very peculiar institution beginning in 2019, and found “overwhelmingly collaborative” evidence of wage theft.
How much wage theft are we talking about exactly? Claims run into tens of millions of dollars.
But as Work-Bites has previously reported, the state doesn’t want to cover the cost of paying people what they’re owed; the healthcare agencies that employs them complain they couldn’t possibly afford it; and the union representing home health aides fears the employers would go bankrupt if they had to pay up.
Marte’s No More 24 Act would limit home health aide shifts to 12 hours and cap the work week to 50 hours — workers could be assigned additional hours in emergencies.
It has just 14 cosponsors in the New York City Council, however, and time is running out fast for more to sign on before the current legislative session ends in two-and-a-half months, and the bill would need to be reintroduced.
City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams [D-28th District] insisted, following last week’s No More 24 rally outside City Hall, that she “supports workers” — and that the legislative body she apparently controls is “focused on advancing meaningful solutions to protect them.”
“Meaningful” would be paying home health aides their money.
Instead, Speaker Adams says, “The path forward to address 24-hour home care must occur at the state level, given [that] the regulatory and payment structures that govern home-care work flow through state Medicaid.”
The Speaker further states, “To resolve this issue and deliver for home-care workers and the people they care for, advocacy for policy change must be focused on the state level. When Intro 175 had a hearing last fall, this position was reiterated by several stakeholders, including state legislators and disability advocates.”
There’s another chestnut that everyone in city government is probably even more familiar than the wizened one mentioned above: Passing the buck.
“Speaker Adams is hiding behind the state to avoid taking responsibility for the inhumane 24-hour shift to which home care workers in New York City are subjected,” NMASS and Aint I a Woman? Campaign spokesperson JoAnn Lum tells Work-Bites. “Why are the 24-hour shifts so prevalent in New York City, whereas, upstate, for instance, 24-hour care is provided by two split shifts of 12 hours each or three shifts of 8 hours each? This is a New York City problem.”
Council Member Marte argues the No More 24 Act is actually a text amendment to the New York City Fair Workweek Law enacted way back in 2017 protecting fast food and retail workers from being assigned unduly long shifts — and that passing the latest version of Intro. 175 would simply mean extending those same safeguards to home care workers.
“The Fair Workweek Law has been challenged in court multiple times and has been upheld as legally sound,” a spokesperson for Council Member Marte told Work-Bites via email. “While a few people spoke against the bill at the [fall] hearing, their concerns have been addressed in the amended version. The overwhelming majority of the 8 hour hearing was in full support of this legislation, and it is disappointing that the voices of immigrant women of color are being minimized because of the opposition of an uninformed state elected official.”
Lum and the home health aides she’s helping to represent are fed up and calling on Speaker Adams to resign.
“Home care workers doing the work in New York City are predominantly women of color and immigrants,” Lum adds. “Is that why Speaker Adams ducks responsibility for ending the 24-hour workday — because she thinks it's okay to make women of color in New York City work every hour of a day, 24 hours, at the expense of their health and their families? Is Speaker Adams deflecting responsibility for the 24-hour workday here in New York City because she is protecting the interests of insurance companies and home-care agencies who profit off the 24-hour shift at 13 hour of pay?
Lum adds, “By helping insurance companies profit off the backs of women of color, using public funds — Medicaid — the Speaker shows that she is unfit to lead the City Council and should step down!”
The Aint I a Woman Campaign further blasted the Speaker’s response, telling Work-Bites “24-hour workdays are a crime against humanity that must end — and even Adams can no longer claim it’s about funding or money.”
“All she can do is try to blame the state *PROCEDURE* instead,” a spokesperson for the group said in an email. “Adams makes NYC even more pathetic, as the whole world is watching now how New Yorkers plan to end this mass-scale modern day slavery, and yet our Speaker timidly passes the ball to the state structure to further avoid the question.”
Despite filing wage theft claims with the state totaling tens of millions of dollars, the Labor Department, nevertheless, shut down its four-year probe back in April. Home health aides have responded with a class-action law suit demanding the state restart investigations.
Work-Bites has reached out to the governor’s office for comment on this story and is awaiting a response.
“Let’s face it: all parties benefit from getting two workers for the price of one — all parties except the home-care workers and their elderly and disabled charges,” Cross-union Retirees Organizing Committee [CROC] member Martha Cameron tells Work-Bites. “At bottom it's about money — supposedly there's not enough money in Medicaid to hire and pay home-care workers fairly.”
Members of CROC who are critical of Speaker Adams for sitting on a bill to protect the healthcare benefits of municipal retirees have spoken out on behalf of home health aides before.
In May, CROC member and UFT retiree Gloria Brandman called Speaker Adams’ refusal to allow Intro. 175A to get to a floor vote “disgraceful” and a “blow to democracy.”
Work-Bites reader Diana Scalera weighed in on the issue this past week.
“These two groups are the most minor concern of our current City Council,” Scalera wrote. “They are not addressing the needs of 24-hour care workers, and they will not agree to protect 250,000 municipal retirees from Medicare Advantage. We are a group of "left behinds" when distributing the city budget and supporting unionists. The City Council hides behind the state's actions as excuses for their inaction instead of becoming advocates for those in need.”
One obvious solution, according to Cameron, is to get the market out of Medicaid.
“Stop funneling public dollars through for-profit insurance companies like Aetna,” she says. “There would be more money for actual health care. The workers would get fair wages and safer working conditions. Their patients would get better care. And Speaker Adams could stop acting as a roadblock to Intro 175A, and instead promote legislation that actually benefited workers.”
According to Scalera, New York City residents need a “new type of City Council that puts the population's needs first instead of Big Pharma/Healthcare, Big Real Estate, and the Police. We need a City Council that cares for people over business.”
Protesters promise to be back at City Hall on Nov. 16.
“As speakers have said on Oct 18, groups from Honduras to Canada to China are speaking up to end the violence,” the Aint I a Woman Campaign added. “When we go back to City Hall on Nov 16, international communities will read out their statements to further condemn this crime against humanity.”