On December 15, 2011, the Obama Administration announced proposed regulations to expand workers' rights protections to home care workers.  (For more information: click here.)

Minimum wage and overtime protections are basic labor rights that have been in place for almost all wage workers in the United States for decades.  But home care workers, people who provide essential care for elderly and disabled individuals, have not had those protections because of an exclusion in the law for "companions."  According to the National Employment Law Project, when Congress first extended the Fair Labor Standards Act to cooks, child care workers, house cleaners, and other domestic workers in 1974 and exempted "companions" for the disabled and elderly, they were not thinking of the modern home care worker whose primary income is derived from backbreaking work in another's home.  Duties often include meal preparation, assisting with dressing, bathing, toileting, and monitoring vital signs.  These workers deserve to be paid fairly and to be given other protections.  The individuals they care for will benefit by having an alert, rested worker instead of an exhausted, disgruntled one.  Opponents cry that these measures are too expensive, but 21 states and Washington, D.C. already require minimum wage protections for this group and fifteen of those states (including New York) also require overtime pay.  Treating care workers fairly is the right thing to do for them and for those that receive their care.