By Joe Maniscalco

New York City home health aides would like to brand City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams as a “Grinch” or a “Scrooge” this holiday season for continuing to stubbornly suppress a bill outlawing exploitive 24-hour work shifts in the home health care industry — but they really can’t.

Both of those guys had a change of heart come Christmas Day. Adams’ heart will likely remain two-sizes too small this year because of…machine politics.

Hundreds of New York City home health aides battling back against the “modern day slavery” built into New York’s home health care industry returned to City Hall under a downpour on Dec. 18 — just like they said they would — to demand the Democratic Party powerhouse at the head of the New York City Council allow a floor vote on Intro. 175 — the “No More 24” bill.

"The 24-hour work day needs to come to an end, and our working environment must improve so that future generations also don’t have to endure this torture and discrimination,” New York City home health aide Chen Lee said at this week’s rally through an interpreter.

Home health aides could have also directed some of their righteous anger at City Council Member Carmen De La Rosa [D-10th District] — chair of the Civil Service and Labor Committee — because the “No More 24 bill” has been sitting in a dark and dusty corner of said committee for a very long time now. It’s right there next to Intro. 1099 — the bill protecting New York City municipal retirees from having their Medicare benefits snatched away from them.

It is fully within Chairperson De La Rosa’s power to bring both Intro. 175 and Intro. 1099 to the floor for a vote. It says so right there in the rulebook.

The “progressive” Democrat representing the hard-scrabbled streets of Washington Heights, Inwood and Marble Hill touts herself as “committed to building a community-driven government rooted in the principles of co-governance and participatory democracy.”

Yet, that last string of words? Yeah, that’s all bunk. Balderdash. Stuff and nonsense, if you like. It’s bull—t.

As Work-Bites has already reported, despite having all the power she needs as chair of the Civil Service & Labor Committee to put any bill she likes residing in her committee to the floor for a vote, Council Member De La Rosa adamantly refuses to do so. 

And she chooses not to because she is someone who simply refuses to cross the will of City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams. You see, folks…there’s a “protocol” at work inside the New York City Council that really dictates how our “democratic” system of government operates.

What the New York City Council Speaker says — goes. And the New York City Council Speaker, by the way, is widely considered a close working ally of Hizzoner Eric Adams.

“We ask you [Speaker Adams], have a change of heart,” Council Member Chris Marte [D-1st District], lead sponsor of Intro. 175 cried at Monday’s rally. “Put this bill on the floor, and let us all have the Christmas we all deserve.”

The council member really would have been better off yelling up to the top of Mount Crumpit and the Grinch himself.

“Speaker Adams…you’re a woman…you should feel our pain, but you don’t because you’ve never known what it is to work a 24-hour shift,” said another longtime New York City home health aide who says she hasn’t spent a Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day with her family in over a decade.

The older women of color who represent the overwhelming majority of home health aides in New York City being forced to work punishing 24-hour shifts may not enjoy any sympathy from the “progressive” women of color inside the City Council — but they have plenty of support from younger women of color working in the tech and service industries who recognize bull—-t when they see it. 

They also stood in solidarity with home health aides outside City Hall on Monday demanding Speaker Adrienne Adams allow a vote on the “No More 24” bill.

“One-hundred-and-fifty years ago, workers were fighting for an eight hour day,  and today, we’re still fighting for the same thing,” Amazon Labor Union organizer Justine Medina said.

During this busy holiday shopping season, Medina added, Amazon employees are being forced to work 60-hour work weeks just to keep their jobs.

Like home health aides, “They have no say in it,” she said. “It is not okay that this is the fight we are still fighting. We need an eight-hour-day. Even the workers who are working eight hour days in this city, most of them have to work two or three jobs to take care of [their] families. That is not okay. We demand respect. Speaker, it is time to end the 24-hour work day.”

A recent college grad now working in the tech industry said the 24-hour shifts older women and men of color are being subjected to in New York’s home health care industry today are “making it bad for all workers” — even in her lucrative industry.

“A lot of people think it’s great [working in tech] — but we have 24-hour work days, too,” she said. “Whenever tech workers try to fight back, what we hear is…‘it’s okay because you’re paid so well’…‘Oh, it’s okay because the health care industry has [24-hour work days] so you can’t complain.’”

One student still studying at Pratt University further connected the dots saying, “The biggest issue here, is that this is normalized all over the country.”

“What type of precedent are we setting for ourselves when we enter the workplace?” the student continued. 

The Speaker’s office has consistently claimed that any attempt at reforming 24-hour work shifts in New York’s home health care industry would require upending the federal funding stream, and, therefore, must be addressed at the state level.

So? Shake things up, “No More 24” proponents demand. Why not use the power that you do have to bring “Intro. 175 — and Intro. 1099 along with it — to the floor of the City Council for a vote? Let the people ostensibly elected by the citizens of New York City debate and discuss the merits of both bills in full public view. 

That’s what "community-driven government rooted in the principles of co-governance and participatory democracy” actually looks like. This “protocol” thing that they’ve got going on now inside the New York City Council is something else entirely. It’s bulls—t.

Happy Yuletide to one and all.

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