Cuomo: Stop Government-Sponsored Sweatshops!
Cuomo’s Department of Labor has issued new regulations that legalizes the 24-hour work day for home attendants and says nighttime work is free. These inhuman regulations represent a brutal attack against the predominantly immigrant women that do this vital caretaking work.
For more than two years, home attendants from Chinese Planning Council (CPC) and First Chinese Presbyterian (FCP) have been organizing against their employers to recover stolen wages. Home attendants in these cases were forced by employers to work grueling 24- hour shifts, and were paid for only 12 or 13 hours of work.. These home attendants reached out to workers from other agencies to join together to assert their rights.
In August and September of 2017, a court ruled in three separate cases making the law clear: home attendants working 24-hour shifts have the right to be paid for every hour worked. Home attendants celebrated this victory and called on still more workers to come forward to put a stop to forced overtime and exploitation in this industry. Home attendants are uniting to demand that home care agencies pay back all of the owed wages from years of unpaid hours of 24-hour shifts NOW and put a stop to this illegal practice immediately.
Hot on the heels of this legal victory and worker organizing, Cuomo’s administration is colluding with insurance companies and the homecare industry to steer this country back to enslaving workers around the clock. Cuomo’s new regulations are an attack on workers, on immigrant women, on patients and their families, and on the NYS courts.
These illegal and inhuman regulations hurt women workers and their patients because when forced to work 24-hours a day, home attendants are sleep deprived, stressed and separated for long stretches from their home and families. These regulations make it clear whose side Cuomo is on–the side of the bosses who are profiting off the exploitation of women and other workers.
Join us to demand that Cuomo stop the attack on women workers and:
Honor and support the court decisions that home attendants working 24-hour shifts should be paid for 24 hours
Prohibit 24-hour workdays–instead, provide split shifts to allow home attendants time to rest and patients to receive proper care
Withdraw the DOL regulations
Get Involved!
If you’re an organization, you can endorse the Justice For Homecare Workers Project
If you’re an individual, you can sign and spread the petition