Healthcare aides denied minimum wage, overtime

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that healthcare aides around the country are not entitled to minimum wage even if hired by private companies. This decision keeps in place a long-standing law that denies minimum wage and overtime pay to workers who provide “companionship services” in homes.

The impact of the ruling will vary by state, since many states have their own minimum wage and overtime laws. But

Evelyn Coke, a 73-year-old retiree, spent more than two decades in the home care industry helping the ill and the elderly. Coke was the plaintiff in the case decided by the Supreme Court.

millions of workers will be impacted. The federal minimum wage currently is a dismal $5.15 per hour. It will increase to $5.85 on July 24, 2007, and, eventually, to $7.25 per hour in July 2009. According to federal law, people who work more than eight hours a day receive overtime at 1.5 times their regular pay rate.

A U.S. appeals court in New York previously had ruled that the minimum wage law applied to home care workers who are employed by a private company or a public agency. However, the Supreme Court overturned the decision, leaving it up to Congress to change the law.

The racist and sexist nature of this ruling is evident. Women and oppressed people comprise the majority of home healthcare workers. There are over one million healthcare aides assisting the elderly and the disabled in their homes today. They are among the lowest paid workers and they often receive little or no benefits.

Although healthcare aides work long hours, usually including graveyard shifts, they are treated by federal labor law like part-time babysitters.

The decision is yet another blow to the working class delivered by corporate bosses and their allies in the U.S. government, including the Supreme Court. The Court is not somehow divorced from politics. It is an essential tool for the ruling capitalist class to strengthen and ratify its attacks on workers.

The ruling means that private companies are able to pay meager, unlivable wages to home care workers, disregard overtime pay, and effectively boost their profits as usual.

Of course, even minimum wage is not sufficient for workers to survive on. A single mother with two small children, living in an urban area and earning $8.00 an hour is still below the official poverty level. And that’s at almost $3.00 more than the current federal minimum wage. This is the logic of profit-driven capitalism.

As employers reap the benefits of this anti-worker ruling, home healthcare aides will continue to struggle to make ends meet.

Our task is to link the struggle for better wages for home healthcare workers to the struggle of all workers. The tiny minority of capitalist owners will not just voluntarily increase wages or pay overtime. It is up to our class, the working class, to demand and fight for better wages and benefits, while we also fight against the unequal, racist capitalist system that is the root of all these problems.