Ending Hunger in America, 2014 Hunger Report Full Report | Page 84
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Home health care
services for the elderly
is one of the fastest
growing fields of
employment, while it
remains one of the
lowest paid.
expect them to invest in their own training without some guarantee of improvements in pay
and working conditions.
In 2002, Evelyn Coke, an adult care worker from New York, took her employer to court.
She had worked for years without days off or overtime pay and 70-hour weeks for less than
the minimum wage.85 Like restaurant servers, adult care workers were not covered by the
minimum wage and overtime protections in the Fair Labor Standards Act, because the law
still had a “companionship exemption” for those who care for elderly and disabled people.
This is a relic of the past that shows how adult care work was traditionally viewed—as though
things had not changed since the days when it meant that a woman from the neighborhood
would come to read to an elderly
person whose sight was failing.
In 2007, the case reached the
Supreme Court, which ruled that
it was up to the White House to
change the compensation policies
for adult care workers.86 In 2011,
the Obama administration proposed a rule change to remove the
minimum wage exemption. During
the review phase, the Department
of Labor received close to 26,000
comments, overwhelmingly in
support of the change.87 Lobbying
against the rule change was the
extremely profitable home care
industry.88 Approximately 70 percent of adult care workers are employed by home care agencies.89 The Department of Labor
estimated that the additional costs of covering adult care workers under federal minimum
wage standards would be less than 0.1 percent of the industry’s $84 billion in revenues.90
In September 2013, the Obama administration announced it was extending minimum wage
and overtime protections to the adult care workers, although the change will not go into effect
until January 2015. “These new rules are a major victory for the 2.5 million home care workers
in America, and the millions more who will be needed to meet America’s growing need over
the next decades,” said Sarita Gupta, executive director of Jobs with Justice and American
Rights at Work. “By extending basic labor protections to in-home care workers, the Department of Labor has helped pave the way for strong, sustainable growth of the care workforce.”91
One person who did not see this day arrive was Evelyn Coke. She died in 2009 at the
age of 74.
An Honest Day’s Pay
For some time now, policymakers have understood that low-wage work does not pay
enough to support a family. As early as the 1970s, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)
was used to supplement low wages. The EITC offsets federal payroll and income taxes. It
has enjoyed bipartisan support because it rewards work. Its explicit objective is to reward
74? Chapter 2
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Bread for the World Institute