On Labor Day, Direct Care Workers Deserve More Than Celebration
This Labor Day, PHI celebrates the historic contributions and achievements of American workers—including the efforts of more than 5 million direct care workers who ensure the well-being of older adults and people with disabilities across the country.
At the same time, our nation now confronts the reality of multiple policy developments that, taken together, contribute to a deeply concerning pattern of disruption to the quality of direct care jobs—and the quality of care for millions of Americans.
Unprecedented cuts to Medicaid and significant, increasingly harsh changes to immigration policy are creating cascading effects that will challenge the ability of direct care workers to provide the care and support Americans rely on each day.
Most recently, just weeks before Labor Day, the U.S. Department of Labor—the agency charged with protecting all workers—actively halted enforcement of federal minimum wage and overtime protections for home care workers as it seeks to permanently strip those rights away. These rights, which were only granted in 2013, corrected a long-standing injustice rooted in the original, discriminatory exclusion of this workforce—one comprised primarily of women of color—from the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
The challenges facing our long-term care system will not be solved by making essential jobs less tenable. A strong care infrastructure requires strategic investment in this workforce, through quality training, competitive wages and benefits, respect and professional recognition, and real opportunity. Fundamental labor protections are the basis for all efforts to ensure quality jobs for this workforce.
“On Labor Day, it is deeply troubling that the federal body meant to protect workers is instead reanimating a legacy of exclusion—stripping basic wage and overtime protections from home care workers,” said Jodi M. Sturgeon, President and CEO of PHI. “This is not merely a policy debate; it is a statement about whose labor we value in this country. We cannot build a strong care system by devaluing the very people who provide the care.”
As we mark this holiday, PHI calls on our nation’s leaders to reverse the halting of FLSA protections, commit to policies that respect and recognize the essential contributions of home care workers, and work to strengthen, not weaken, this critical sector.
