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By Joe Maniscalco

As recently as last week, New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams [D-28th District] was repeating her longstanding claim that she supports home health aides fighting to “improve their working conditions” — but that actually ending the 24-hour workdays they’re forced to endure is a state issue, and, therefore, out of her hands.

Fellow New York City Democrats who are demanding passage of a New York City Council bill aimed at ending round-the-clock work shifts aren’t buying it, however, and say there’s a whole helluva lot Speaker Adams and the New York City Council can do to change things. 

“The city needs to speak and make a demand on the state to move,” Downtown Independent Democrats [DID] President Richard Corman told Work-Bites outside the gates of City Hall on March 23.

The DID was one of nearly 10 local Democratic Party clubs around the city who turned out in support of home health aides on Day 4 of a hunger strike they hope will ultimately compel Speaker Adams to finally allow Council Member Chris Marte’s “No More 24” bill [Intro. 615] onto the floor for a vote.

“I think if she put this on the floor that we would get a majority,” Corman said. “So, it’s really up to the council members themselves to demand that they want to have their voices heard.”

Others who braved Saturday’s torrential rains to push passage of the “No More 24” bill included representatives from the Seaside Independent Democrats, Three Bridges Democratic Club, and Village Independent Democrats.

The measure calling for 24-hour shifts in home care to be split into 12-hour shifts still only has 12 co-sponsors despite increasing support citywide,

“The state needs to listen to what the city is demanding and take action,” Corman continued. “This will, we believe, force the state to finally take some action. There’s a bill in the State [Legislature] to address this that’s been languishing for just way too long. We believe that if we make a statement here in the city, and it’s been done before, that will drive the issue in the state.”

Introduced last year, the “Home Care Savings & Reinvestment Act” could change the way New York State provides vital home care. There’s also another piece of legislation mirroring Marte’s “No More 24” bill that remains stuck in Albany. 

1199 SEIU, the union representing many home health aides, says the “Home Care Savings & Reinvestment Act” could save New York $3 billion annually by cutting out the “private insurance companies meant to provide home care for older and disabled residents, and returning home care management to the state.”

Splitting 24-hour shifts in half and hiring more home health aides would reportedly cost an additional $645 million a year.

Home health aides and their supporters who characterize mandatory 24-hour shifts in the industry as a very real form of “racist violence” against the largely older women of color doing the job, have long charged Speaker Adams of being beholden to the private health insurance industry.

The speaker says the money needed to split 24-hour workdays into 12-hour shifts and hire more workers would require changing New York State Department of Labor Regulations or Medicaid Reimbursement rates.

Marte warned on Saturday that New York is “in a crisis” with an aging population only continuing to grow and the demand for home care only increasing. Already, he said, workers would “rather do any other job than become a home attendant. Failure to act now on “No More 24” legislation, he added, will have devastating consequences for all those most needing care.

“If we don’t take action now, this crisis is going to become so bad, that our healthcare system will break and the people that need 24-hour care will not receive it,” he said. “The seniors [and] people with disabilities who rely on home attendants will not have it. They will either be sent to nursing homes, or they will be left home without care. And that’ s not acceptable.”

A recent City University of New York study calling for greater public investment in home care workers projects the state’s elderly population will skyrocket over the next 20 years.

Marte lauded the hunger strikers for their courage, but also said inspiration alone is “not not gonna make all these council members and our speaker put this [bill] to the floor of the City Council.”

“We need action,” he said. “This fight is not just about workers…it’s not just a fight for the patients…it’s a fight to make sure our healthcare system works for the people.”