By Josh Eidelson: Home-care workers are not baby sitters!

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.salon.com/2013/09/23/HOME_CARE_WORKERS_ARE_NOT_BABYSITTERS/

Monday, Sep 23, 2013 01:12 PM CST

Thanks to a new rule change, 2 million Americans will finally be treated as dignified adults. Here's what it means



(Credit: Reuters/Cynthia Karam)

In a major and long-awaited move, the U.S. Department of Labor last week announced a finalized regulatory change that will extend federal minimum wage and overtime protections to nearly 2 million home-care workers for the first time.

Secretary of Labor Tom Perez told reporters that the long-awaited change “promotes the dignity of work” as well as “the dignity of aging in place.” He added that it meant workers caring for elderly or disabled clients in the home would no longer be treated like “teenage baby sitters performing casual employment,” but rather “treated with dignity, and their hard work is finally rewarded.”

As I’ve reported, President Obama first announced the proposed rule change in 2011, and some involved expected it to be completed within his first term. It represents one of the most significant pro-labor moves to date by the Obama administration, which has come under criticism from some advocates for scrapping proposed new Department of Labor protections for child farmworkers, and taking years to advance proposed regulations on dangerous silica dust. The new rules also represent a dramatic recognition of a reality decried by activists: Growing numbers of U.S. workers have been explicitly excluded from federal laws establishing minimum wage and hour standards, and establishing a right to unionize. That’s included most domestic workers doing caring and cleaning work in the home – a sector that could double in size as baby boomers age.

“What is happening is that work is becoming more unstable, insecure, dangerous and vulnerable,” Ai-jen Poo, the director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, told me in an April interview. “When I first started organizing domestic workers, people kind of perceived it as this very exotic shadow workforce at the margins of the economy.” But today, said Poo, “As more and more people become temporary, part-time or contracted, nobody knows who their real boss is, no one has collective bargaining, no one even knows what bargaining is and no one works in a workplace where bargaining is actually feasible. We’re essentially all becoming domestic workers.”

FULL story at link.

[KoKo]

1. K&R! As Boomers grow older...there will be need for skilled Health Aides

both in Nursing Homes but for the Boomers who want to live on their own while they can but will need some "Assistance" and just remember...if you live long enough...eventually you will need help from those other than your family (given how spread out our kids, relatives, families are today...and how they are stretched themselves with their own lives, kids and responsibilities.

Few of the Aged want to be dependent on their kids...and many don't have kids or family or children who live close enough for them not feel they are a burden and those will be left to die on their own if they can't find either Home Health Care or some Assisted Living situation.

This is an opportunity for so many caring individuals to do some caring work...if they could make a living that supported them. We need Govt. assistance with giving a decent living wage supplement to Health Care/Home Aide Workers who like the work and shouldn't be gouged by Employment Agencies to make below poverty level wages.