NYC Home Care Workers Refuse to Be Erased; March on Hochul’s Office
Home care workers and their supporters—along with CROC member Evie Jones Rich [r]—continue demonstrating after building security refused to accept a letter calling on Governor Kathy Hochul to end round-the-clock work in the industry this week. Photos Joe Maniscalco
By Joe Maniscalco
New York City home care workers hoping on Wednesday afternoon to deliver a direct appeal to Governor Kathy Hochul to declare round-the-clock work in the industry as “violence against women” were instead told to take their letter and walk it over to the nearest Post Office.
Roughly two hundred home care workers and their supporters fighting hard to end 24-hour work shifts and recover a reported $90 million in unpaid wages pounded the pavement outside Governor Hochul’s Third Avenue offices in Manhattan on March 12, in an ongoing militant campaign that shows no signs of retreating.
“I worked sleepless 24-hour shifts for 12 years,” home care worker Luz Estrella told demonstrators as building security and NYPD cops looked on from the other side of a line of tape set up to keep protesters away. “My agency, United Jewish Council, still owes me hundreds of thousands of dollars in stolen wages because Kathy Hochul’s Department of Labor illegally closed my case! Kathy Hochul is helping these agencies get away with destroying our lives! She is against women, against Latinas!”
Home care worker Luz Estrella says she is owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in stolen wages.
Last fall, a State Supreme Court judge annulled the Department of Labor’s decision to suddenly drop an active wage theft probe on the behalf of home care workers seeking restitution unpaid work. But the Governor’s Office is fighting that ruling.
“At a time when our most vulnerable are being assaulted by the federal government, Democrats have an even greater obligation to fight for our workers,” Democratic District Leader Vittoria Fariello told demonstrators. “I call on Hochul to do the right thing and enforce the law.”
Cailan Feng, a home care worker with the Chinese-American Planning Council [CPC], called 24-hour shifts “inhumane” and the CPC “the worst unscrupulous boss.”
“All of us care workers have been protesting in front of CPC for eight months, but they have still not paid back the workers,” she said. “During this time, Governor Hochul actually gave the family plan (CDPAP) worth billions of dollars to the worst company, CPC. This is trampling on our care workers! Governor Hochul, do you want to tell the world that women of color should work 24 hours a day?”
Democratic District Leader Vittoria Fariello calls on Governor Kathy Hochul to “do the right thing and enforce the law.”
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.
Hochul launched an initiative last year to “streamline” CDPAP by designating a private financial management service company called “PPL” as the sole Fiscal Intermediary for the program. The Chinese-American Planning Council is characterized as a “key regional partner.”
Democratic Assembly Member Ron Kim—who in December chided Hochul’s failure to champion home care workers fighting to end 24-hour shifts and recover unpaid wages as a prime example of why Democrats are losing ground to Republicans and rightwing forces—sent a letter of support, declaring home care workers are “women who gave their blood, their sweat, and their tears as home care workers only to have their wages stolen and their suffering erased.”
“We’re asking Governor Hochul,” Assembly Member Kim’s representative continued, “and the Department of Labor to recognize the injustices they have endured by not rewarding that same employer with a CDPAP contract, but fully end the 24-hour work day, and by ensuring our workers are paid back their stolen wages.”
New York City home care workers fighting to end 24-hour shifts and recover tens of millions of dollars in unpaid wages picket outside Governor Kathy Hochul’s Manhattan offices on Wednesday, March 12.
A CPC spokesperson told Work-Bites that her organization’s subsidiary CPCHAP is “committed to doing right by our workers—as evident that we have spent nearly $6 million on overtime, bonuses, and reimbursement for travel and PPE in the past year.”
“Home care workers consistently demonstrate their preference for CPCHAP as an agency of choice for workers,” the spokesperson added. “CPCHAP's General Counsel has repeatedly sought to meet with the few protesting workers, with their representatives present, to hear and try to resolve their issues, but they have repeatedly refused to meet.”
Sarah Ahn, spokesperson for the Aint I a Woman campaign—the advocacy organization supporting home care attendants in their fight—dismissed the CPC’s claims.
“The CPC owes its workers $90-plus million dollars,” she told Work-Bites. “Pay your workers now. Stop avoiding the workers' demands.”
Home care worker Baojin Qiu called Governor Hochul and CPC President and CEO Wayne Ho “the biggest thieves.”
“Not only are you not enforcing the law to hold them accountable, you also go out of your way to support their violent acts and give them money,” she said. “I am a woman, just like you. Women should help women, but instead, you step on thousands and thousands of us women workers, suffocating us.”
Seven home care workers and their supporters picketing outside the CPC’s 60th Anniversary gala on Wall Street were arrested along with seven others two weeks ago, after tempers flared and at least one person identified as a journalist who was attempting to document the demonstration had their phone confiscated.
“We are all the line of resistance,” New York City municipal retiree and Cross-Union Retirees Organizing Committee member Roberta Pikser told fellow demonstrators on Wednesday. “If the billionaires and their friends can destroy your bodies and your movement, they will do the same to all workers. We see this now on the federal level. So, it is more important than ever that we stand strong. Now is the moment for all of us workers to come together and to say enough—we will not stand for this any longer.”
Republican Congress Member Mike Lawler [NY-17th District] also sent a letter to support saying he stands with the “hardworking home health aides who are protesting today against the CPC alleged wage theft.”
“I join a bipartisan group of state legislators in demanding the NYS Department of Labor reopen its investigation into the CPC’s alleged wage theft and comply with the court order,” he said in a statement. “Governor Hochul’s failure to act is indefensible. This, alongside serious bid-rigging accusations and calls for investigations within her own party, demands a probe by the US Department of justice.”
Work-Bites made repeated attempts ask Governor Hochul’s office for a response to demonstrators’ demands—and for further clarification about the refusal to accept their letter—but those requests have not been answered.