AIW’s Urgent New Year Message: Scharome Cares Settlement of Owed Wages for Home Care Workers Sets New Standard
As Ain't I a Woman?! Campaign enters 2022, we look back to 2021 and highlight the recent unprecedented victory of six home care workers of the agency Scharome Cares: a settlement of $600,000 for unpaid minimum wages and overtime wages. This is a step forward in justice, and we call on everyone to join us in fighting to end the racist violence of the 24-hour workday and the wage theft that thousands are subjected to.
In the settlement, the six home attendant women workers won back all the unpaid 11 night hours and some overtime wages, equaling about 15 hours in a 24-hour shift. Scharome Cares worker, Shao P Meng, for example, was compensated $178,800 for 6 years of 24-shifts. See settlement (Case No. 1:20-CV-2049) for more details.
In light of this settlement, we ask, why is it that workers from union shops like Chinese-American Planning Council (CPC) and United Jewish Council (UJC), having worked as many backbreaking 24-hour shifts as their non-unionized Scharome Cares colleagues, still have not gotten their back wages?!
Rather, we heard a rumor, that CPC, UJC, and other agencies unionized with 1199SEIU will settle for an amount as meager as only about $250 per person for claims starting in 2013, as part of an arbitration for all home attendants who worked 24-hour shifts.
We hope this is not true, as it would be deeply humiliating to all the brave immigrant women workers who have been demanding their back wages for years. They all worked countless, unpaid sleepless nights, which caused so much injury and harm to their physical and mental health. They deserve full justice and respect: not only a just amount of back payment, but a complete end to the racist and sexist 24-hour workday.
We urge everyone to join us in sending an urgent New Year message to all law-breaking home care agencies like CPC and UJC: all workers’ back wages ought to be settled in 2022 and meet the new standard set by Scharome Cares.
The AIW Campaign