The Obama Administration announced on Tuesday that home care workers will finally receive minimum wage and overtime pay by 2015.
The administration said that new rule would take effect in January 1, 2015 to give Medicaid programs and families that use home care workers ample time to prepare.
Advocates of this new rule claimed that home care workers were mistakenly classified into the same category as baby sitters, which is “companionship services” – a category exempted from minimum wage and overtime protection. In this new rule, home care workers would be covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act.
However, industry experts say that most of these workers earn $8.50-12/hour whereas the federal minimum wage is $7.25/hour, but many were still deprived of the overtime coverage. About 20 states deprive home care workers from wage and hour laws.
Laura Fortman, deputy administrator of the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division told the New York Times, “We think workers providing this critical work should be receiving the same basic protection and coverage as the vast majority of American workers. We’ve seen a lot of turnover in this industry, and we believe that this new rule will stabilize the workforce.”
Representative John Kline of Minnesota and Representative Tim Walberg of Michigan also criticized the new rule saying that the new rule would not only increase expenses and would “limit access to in-home care for vulnerable Americans. Faced with higher costs, some individuals will have no choice but to leave their homes and enter institutional living.”
To back-up the new rule, Fortman said that 15 states are already providing minimum wage and overtime pay to home care workers and so far, “we have not seen any evidence that it has resulted in job loss or any serious negative impact for the workers or for the people using the services.”
Under the new rule, “care” means assisting in activities of daily living and “instrumental activities of daily living like preparation of meals while “companion services” means fellowship and security for an elderly person or person who are ill, injured or disabled that needs assistance which is mostly limited to the person, family or household using the services.
If a home care worker or companion gives “care” that is more than 20 percent of the total hours she works per week, then she should be covered by the minimum wage and overtime pay.
