New York Times Again Calls for Fair Pay for Home Care Workers

A New York Times editorial calls on President Obama to “push the new rules over the finish line” if his administration’s promise to extend minimum wage and overtime protections to home care workers is ever to be realized.

While the White House Office of Management and Budget reviews the Department of Labor‘s final draft rule to revise the “companionship exemption,” the highly profitable for-profit home care agencies have again been lobbying to thwart the administration’s efforts to ensure home care workers fair pay, the February 28 editorial says.

There is a “real danger” that the fight for labor protections for home care workers could be lost, which would be a “great injustice,” the editorial says. It continues:

“The companionship exemption amounts to an institutionalized form of sexism, racism and exploitation, given that most home care workers are women, often African-American or Hispanic, and immigrants. California, or any or any other state, cannot expect to balance its budget on the backs of exploited labor.”

The New York Times has editorialized in support of extending home care workers minimum wage protections on several occasions over the last few years.

Read all of the Times editorials and other media coverage on the companionship exemption at the PHI Campaign for Fair Pay website.

— by Deane Beebe