Though many of the people they care for wouldn't know it, the roughly two million home care aides who tend to the elderly and disabled don’t enjoy the basic protections of most American workers, such as a guaranteed minimum wage and time-and-a-half for overtime. Such workers are also not paid for the time they spend in the car driving from client to client. But a new federal rule could change that, boosting the pay for such workers.
Congress extended FLSA coverage to "domestic service" workers in 1974, amending the law to apply to employees performing services of a household nature in or about the private home of the person by whom they are employed. Domestic service workers were made subject to the FLSA even though they worked for a private household and not for a covered enterprise. Domestic service workers include, for example, employees employed as cooks, butlers, valets, maids, housekeepers, governesses, janitors, laundresses, caretakers, handymen, gardeners, and family chauffeurs. The 1974 Amendments also created an exemption from both the minimum wage and overtime pay requirements of the Act for casual babysitters and persons "employed in domestic service employment to provide companionship services for individuals who (because of age or infirmity) are unable to care for themselves." Congress also created a more limited exemption from the overtime pay requirement for domestic service employees who reside in the household where they work.
The legislative history explains that the 1974 Amendments were intended to include all employees whose vocation was domestic service, but to exempt from coverage babysitters and companions who were not regular bread-winners or responsible for their families' support. It was not intended to exclude trained personnel such as nurses, whether registered or practical, from the protections of the Act.
The home care industry has undergone a dramatic transformation since the Department published the implementing regulations in 1975. There has been a growing demand for long-term in-home care for persons of all ages, in part because of the rising cost of traditional institutional care, and because of the availability of funding assistance for in-home care under Medicare and Medicaid. The growing demand for long-term in- home care for persons is also partly due to the significant increase in our aging population.
In response to the growing demand for long-term in-home care, the home health care services industry has grown. According to the National Association of Home Care (NAHC) publication, Basic Statistics About Home Care (March 2000), data from the Department of Health and Human Services' Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) showed that the number of Medicare-certified home care agencies increased from 2,242 in 1975 to 7,747 in 1999. In the NAHC 2008 update, this number increased to 9,284 by the end of 2007. The number of for-profit agencies not associated with a hospital, rehabilitation facility, or skilled nursing facility, i.e., freestanding agencies, increased more than any other category of agency from 47 in 1975 to 4,919 in 2006. These for-profit agencies grew from 2 percent of total Medicare-certified agencies in 1975 to 68 percent by 2006, and now represent the greatest percentage of certified agencies. Public health agencies, which constituted over one-half of the certified agencies in 1975, now represent only 15 percent.
There has been a similar increase in the employment of home health aides and personal care aides in the private homes of individuals in need of assistance with basic daily living or health maintenance activities. Bureau of Labor Statistics' (BLS) national occupational employment and wage estimates from the Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) survey show that the number of workers in these jobs tripled during the decade between 1988 and 1998, and by 1998 there were 430,440 workers employed as home health aides and 255,960 workers employed as personal care aides. The combined occupations of personal care and home health aides constitute a rapidly growing occupational group. BLS statistics demonstrate that between 1998 and 2008, this occupational group has more than doubled with home health aides increasing to 955,220 and personal care aides increasing to 630,740.
The growth in demand for in-home care and in the home health care services industry has not resulted in growth in earnings for workers providing in-home care. The earnings of employees in the home health aide and personal care aide categories remain among the lowest in the service industry. Studies have shown that the low income of direct care workers including home care workers continues to impede efforts to improve both jobs and care. The DOL believes that protecting domestic service workers under the Act is an important step in ensuring that the home health care industry attracts and retains qualified workers that the sector will need in the future. Moreover, the workers that are employed by home care staffing agencies are not the workers that Congress envisioned when it enacted the companionship exemption i.e., neighbors performing elder sitting, but are instead professional caregivers entitled to FLSA protection.
The most important change proposed by the DOL would limit the companionship exemption to companions employed only by the family or household using the services. Third party employers, such as in-home care staffing agencies, could not claim the exemption, even if the employee is jointly employed by the third party and the family or household. This rule would effectively overrule overrule the 2007 Supreme Court decsion Long Island Care at Home, Ltd. v. Coke, and would require 3rd party employers such as staffing agencies to pay companions and home health workers overtime under the FLSA when they work in excess of 40 hours per week.
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overtime pay, then this is a case you will want to be following. The U.S. Supreme Court, ("SCOTUS") has agreed to hear Christopher v. SmithKline Beecham, to decide whether outside pharmaceutical reps are exempt from the overtime requirements of the FLSA.
The U.S. Department of Labor today filed a lawsuit against the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services' Child Protective Services Division in Austin for failing to pay 800 current and former investigators and case workers overtime compensation as required by the Fair Labor Standards Act ("FLSA"). The suit seeks back wages of more than $1 million, plus liquidated damages.
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that we are sometimes not able to respond to each and every one of them individually as we would like. So it occurred to us that it might be a good thing to post some of these questions and answer them publicly on the site. Thus we begin the first in what we hope will be a regular series titled "HR Questions."
the daughter of two Hispanic immigrants, has been in Congress since 2000. She has never served on the House Education and Labor Committee. She currently serves on the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.