NYC Home Care Attendants Protest ‘Unlawful’ Arrests; Challenge CPC’s ‘Powerless’ Claim
Home care attendants and their supporters rally outside CPC One on Wednesday morning following the mass arrests of picketers at the organization’s 60th Anniversary gala held last week. Photos/Joe Maniscalco
By Joe Maniscalco
The Chinese-American Planning Council, the highly influential social services organization at the heart of NYC’s battle to end round-the-clock shifts in the home care industry, may insist those slavish 24-hour shifts are unfair to workers—at least 80 home care attendants working for its subsidiary are still doing them.
And it’s not like the CPC and its CPCHAP subsidiary can’t do split shifts because they can—152 people presently caring for clients through the organization are working 12-hour split shifts.
So, what exactly is going on?
While the organization and its CEO and President Wayne Ho publicly advocate for universal 12-hour split shifts, the CPC says it simply doesn’t have the power to split 24-hour shifts on its own. They say that’s because round-the-clock work is mandated by the State of New York and determined by insurance companies.
“Like all home care agencies, CPCHAP does not have the power to split 24-hour shifts on our own and has been advocating for State reform for years, alongside our advocacy for Fair Pay for Home Care,” the CPC said in a statement this week.
Retired home care attendant Lai Yee Chan [r] with Ain’t I a Woman Campaign organizer Vincent Cao.
But just how powerless is the CPC to split shifts for its workers? Upon closer inspection, not as powerless as they claim.
As already established, home care attendants working for the CPC’s affiliate are working both round-the-clock and 12-hour split shifts. How does that happen?
According to the CPC, every 90-180 days, a nurse working for the Human Resources Administration [HRA] or a Managed Care Organization [MCO] conducts assessments of patients with 24-hour care. Based on the assessment, the nurse can recommend to HRA and MCOs that 24-hour shifts be converted into two 12-hour split shifts.
“The nurse returns every 90-180 days to confirm if split shifts should continue,” a CPC spokesperson told Work-Bites this week. “Home care agencies can only recommend, advocate, and appeal for split shifts, but HRA and MCOs make the ultimate decision.”
Organizer Lilly Randall [pink jacket] speaks out this week about the “unlawful” arrests of CPC protesters outside the organization’s 60 Anniversary gala held on Feb. 27.
Retired home health attendant Lai Yee Chan, 71, performed round-the-clock work for the CPC for may years prior to 2014 when she hit a wall, and together with a sympathetic client receiving care, appealed to the agency for split shifts—and she got them.
“The CPC knows how to do it,” Chan told Work-Bites at a home care attendant demonstration held outside the organization’s plush Manhattan headquarters at 45 Suffolk Street on Wednesday morning. “They’re making a lot of money.”
Chan—who says she is owed more that $100,000 after working 24-hour shifts for years while only being paid for 13 hours—was part of a group of about 50-60 home care attendants and supporters from the Ain’t I a Woman Campaign who were at CPC One on Wednesday morning to protest the mass arrests that happened last week outside the organization’s 60th Anniversary gala on Wall Street.
“On Thursday evening, I was unlawfully arrested during a nonviolent picket of CPC’s lies and exploitation,” Lilly Randall said on Tuesday. “CPC specifically target unarmed elderly home attendants because they see right through its facade and have built a movement with the power to expose the rot within.”
New York City Council Member Chris Marte [D-1st District] has a bill in the Council aimed at capping home care attendant shifts at 12-hours—but like his other legislation to protect the Traditional Medicare health insurance coverage of municipal retirees, it’s languishing largely because Speaker Adrienne Adams [D-28th District] opposes it.
New York City home care attendants fighting to recover millions of dollars in unpaid wages and to end round-the-clock work shifts demonstrate outside the Chinese-American Planning Council’s HQ at 45 Suffolk Street on Wednesday.
Council Member Marte, however, also isn’t buying the CPC’s assertion that it’s powerless to split 24-hour shifts on its own.
“CPC has already split shifts for some of their patients requiring 24 hour care—I personally know CPC home attendants who worked 24-hour shifts and got their shifts split to two 12-hour shifts,” he told Work-Bites. “CPC's unwillingness to do so for all their cases, even while this becomes an industry standard, is deeply disappointing. I encourage CPC to start to plan to follow labor law and pay back the stolen wages, as other agencies have done.”
Work-Bites reached out to HRA for further clarification on the criteria being used to determine split shifts, but we’re still waiting on a response.
The CPC, meanwhile, works with roughly 20 Managed Care Organizations providing health insurance plans locally, but there are dozens more operating throughout the rest of the state. According to the CPC, clients can select its home care services through one of the MCOs—but the CPC also declined to discuss the criteria being used to determine split shifts.
"CPC violated the law on numerous occasions in the past decade and still has not been brought to justice,” Ain’t I a Woman Campaign organizer Sarah Ahn told Work-Bites this week. “Continuing to attempt to shirk responsibility is only proof they want to keep the 24-hour system going and expand it through CDPAP, of which soon they will have a monopoly. CPC should stop making excuses and prove it is serious about ending 24-hour shifts by paying back the $90 million in stolen wages it still owes its workers.”
The CPC denies those allegations.
CDPAP—or Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program—is a New York State Medicaid program that allows Medicaid members who are eligible for home care services to choose and hire their own personal caregiver.
Home care attendants and their supporters accuse Governor Kathy Hochul of colluding with the CPC in helping to perpetuate punishing round-the-clock work shifts in New York City’s home care industry—and ripping off workers to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.
They will next rally outside the governor’s Manhattan offices at 919 3rd Avenue on Wednesday, March 12 at 11 a.m.