Category Archives: News

Home Health Workers Are Sick of Being Shut Out of Labor Law

By Michelle Chen, Colorlines and In These Times | August 3, 2011 | Source: Huffington Post

As walking canes replace running shoes, and the parents who raised us start needing to be cared for themselves, the first dawn of America’s aging boom approaches. But even as the “gray wave” looms on the horizon, the way we treat the workers who care for our elders lags generations behind.

Hundreds of thousands of home care workers remain excluded from the country’s key labor laws. As with many other groups of “excluded workers,” like farm and day laborers, inequities in the law hit immigrants and people of color the hardest. And the stakes are higher in home care industry, in which demand for, and the cost of care, reach unprecedented levels. More people have been moving toward home- and community-based services for the elderly and people with disabilities, as alternative to institutionalization. Evidence indicates caring for people at home is in many cases more cost-effective than conventional nursing homes.

Yet for all the help they provide, home care workers feel a bit neglected these days. Through an arcane provision in federal labor law, Washington has essentially shut home-based health workers from minimum-wage and overtime rules. That means home health aides may be even worse off than regular domestic workers, who are at least technically entitled to federal minimum wage. The Department of Labor has since the 1970s manipulated an exemption for “companion” workers “into a whole exclusion” of some 1.7 million skilled workers, according to a report by the National Employment Law Project:

The result has been to suppress wages for the home care workforce, consigning millions of caregivers — the overwhelming majority of them women, many of them immigrants and women of color — to working poverty. The lack of ordinary overtime coverage has also facilitated excessive hours in small segments of the industry. Long hours are not only grueling for workers but can contribute to worse care for patients, as caregivers working 60 hours or more a week face fatigue and stress in performing what is a demanding job under any circumstances. These substandard working conditions have created very serious employee recruitment and retention problems, generating labor shortages that prevent us from meeting the nation’s rapidly growing need for home care.

The NELP has called on the Department of Labor to revise its regulations to include home care workers under federal wage-and-hour protections. Absent federal protection, only 21 states and the District of Columbia currently provide minimum wage or overtime. Still, the NELP points to those local examples as proof that federal coverage of home care workers is feasible.

The need for regulation has increased as the home health industry assumes a more prominent role in the healthcare system. Medicaid funds support many of the agencies that employ the majority of this workforce. And with the home-health aide workforce expected to surge by about 50 percent from 2008-2018, NELP notes that government oversight has tightened as the sector has boomed, and some states have set up public authorities to administer home care services.

Nonetheless, the workforce is asked to do a lot for very little. Workers carry out not just regular companionship duties but also paramedical services like monitoring vital signs and administering medication. Yet a typical aide can work full-time and still not make enough to live on; the 2009 median hourly wage was just $9.34.

Meanwhile, funding shortfalls and budget theatrics in Washington are driving both parties to attack healthcare for the poor and aging. The latest Republican budget proposal would gut Medicaid through some $100 billion in “savings” over the next decade (directly countering promised expansion of Medicaid under health care reform), plus additional cutbacks in Medicare, which of course provides basic medical coverage for seniors. And adding insult to injury, the budget axe is hovering over their social security checks, too.

Earlier this month, the National Domestic Workers Alliance, which has campaigned for the rights of home-based labor across the country, brought the voices of home-based workers to Washington at the Caring Across Generations conference. Ai-jen Poo, executive director of the Alliance, emphasized the connection between quality care and decent work:

Caring for the aging and people with disabilities is one of our most important responsibilities as a nation. That means protecting the vital services we have — Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security — and creating the quality care jobs, training, and family support that we need.

We live in a political climate that constantly devalues critical service sector work, from teaching our kids to keeping the streets clean. Our elders are growing older in the same hostile climate. So we ought to ask ourselves what society collectively owes to the workers with whom we entrust the health and comfort of loved ones. Your grandmother’s home caregiver, who may be just like a family member to her, has a family of her own to take care of when she goes home at night.

Daily News Editorial: Budget bust — The price of neglecting pension reform can be seen in cuts to our schools, to the elderly, even to day laborers

Source: DailyNews.com | July 31, 2011

Day laborers crowding the entrance to Home Depot. Seniors dumped out of day care programs. Students shut out of public higher education because of cost. This is what ignoring pension reform looks like. Until now, the effects of many of the budget cuts by state, mind county and city governments have been visible only around the edges of society. The average person could ignore them. They hit home at someone else’s house.

But now the effects are showing up in everyday life.

They are the theme that links a handful of news stories this month.

The closures of day-labor centers that had been funded by Los Angeles-area cities took away such services as health services, English lessons and protection from exploitive employers. It also sent manual laborers back to Home Depot stores and other unofficial gathering spots to look for work, often to the annoyance of pers.

The discontinuation of state funding for California’s 300 adult day health care centers, including dozens in the San Fernando Valley, raised fears that ailing and isolated senior citizens would be denied medical attention and the company of other people. The responsibility for helping them will fall to other cash-strapped agencies and to seniors’ families.

Cuts in state funding for public education prompted tuition increases of 12 percent for the California State University system and 9.6 percent for the University of California system just weeks before the start of the 2011-12 academic year. That’s a terrible blow for many students and families, for whom money may be scarce anyway these days.

Unfortunately, we’d better get used to such tangible symptoms of government budget crunches.

It is easy but only slightly correct for elected officials to put all of this down to the economic downturn. Leaders themselves deserve blame for signing off on unsustainable benefits for public employees and delaying hard choices.

The day was bound to come when the growing pension obligations would balloon – much like the mortgages that force thousands to walk away from their homes.

City leaders talk about huge revenue gaps. The trouble is not the incoming money, which has stayed roughly the same or grown. The trouble is the cost of servicing the debt and obligations incurred by generations of politicians who traded employee benefits for support and re-election.

Recently, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the City Council scored a small victory on this count by extracting concessions on health-benefits payments from the city’s police force. Of course, to achieve that, the city had to give the police pay raises of 7 percent over three years, handing off a budget headache to another mayor and council.

As one of the largest drains on public funds in the state, pensions and other retirement benefits are siphoning off billions of dollars right off the top of any budget. The downturn in the market only increased the liability. It didn’t create the problem.

Politicians know that most of the electorate finds the issue of pension reform to be vague, esoteric and inaccessible. They know they can take the easy way now because they will no longer be in office – at least, not their current office – when the chickens come home to roost.

Voters have let politicians get away with this, and now, all around us, we see the results of this failure embodied by laborers going back to the Home Depot, seniors being displaced, students leaving college. Chickens roosting.

Local day laborers: Older, undocumented, undereducated

July 28, s 2011 | 11:53am | Source: L.A. Now, LATimesBlogs.LATimes.com

The average day laborer in Harbor City and Wilmington is 44 years old and has lived in the United States for nearly 17 years, according to survey results out of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.

The Harbor-UCLA Summer Urban Health Fellowship conducted research and health outreach with the assistance of seven volunteer s,  nine medical students, 13 college students and 20 local high schoolers.

Their project’s findings were based on interviews with 158 day laborers in Harbor City and Wilmington.

The profile of these local workers differs from a national sample of day laborers based on research from 2004. That earlier study found day laborers had an average age of 34 and had been in the country an average of six years.

The local surveys found that 75% of the workers are not legal United States residents — not surprising given the informal nature of day work and the difficulty of finding regular jobs without U.S. citizenship.

Other findings included:

– More than half the day laborers found work less than 10 days per month; more than a fourth, less than five days
– A third reported performing work they consider dangerous within the last month
– Two-thirds reported doing work for which they were not paid within the last month.
– Two-thirds reported their own health as fair or poor
– More than 30% said they’d been “harassed by police” within the last month
– 75% had not completed high school; two-thirds had not completed eighth grade

All but one of the day laborers surveyed were men.

Interviewers also asked why the laborers came to the United State and recorded their top four responses: 1) to find a better life; 2) to find employment; 3) to provide for families and children; 4) because they believed there would be more opportunities in the U.S.

“They are not coming here to use social services but because they want to work,” said
Chardonnay Vance, a participating medical student from Wake Forest University in North Carolina.

Research guidelines did not allow the high school students to conduct the research, but they participated in other aspects of the program, including organizing community health fairs in the Wilmington area, which is underserved by healthcare providers.

About half the participating students came from Banning and Carson high schools. One high school alum of the program has returned as a volunteer . The program is managed by two Harbor-UCLA s, Gilberto Granados and Jyoti Puvvula, who donate their time.

Virgilio Goze, 18, who just graduated from Banning High, volunteered each of the last four years in the summer outreach program, which is funded by donations from local politicians, medical centers and foundations.

“It pretty much gave me a wider world view,” said Virgilio, whose own parents have sometimes struggled economically since immigrating from the Philippines.

He’ll be attending UCLA as a premed biology major. He wants to be a family : “The general interacts with families. They are the first line. They actually talk to the patient. Those things really touched me.”

Another participant, Erik Ruiz, 16, will be entering the 10th grade at Banning High. He’s grown up with a severely disabled brother.

“I always wanted to know: Why would this happen to anyone?” he said. “I looked to the medical field for finding that question out.”

He plans on becoming the first in his family to graduate from a four-year college in his quest to become a : “I love helping people. Giving everybody a smile makes me happy.”

Wilmington Health Summit: Day laborers suffer poor health, work conditions

By Melissa Evans, Staff Writer | Posted: 07/26/2011 06:11:34 PM PDT | Source: DailyBreeze.com

They may have come to America for a better life, but many of the migrant day laborers in the Wilmington area suffer poor health and work conditions, a study presented Tuesday found.

Among the workers surveyed for the 2011 Wilmington Health Summit, 85 percent said they lack health insurance and a disproportionate number suffer chronic conditions such as high blood pressure and asthma.

Students and researchers who worked on the health study urged the public to get involved and help inform day laborers of available services.

“The findings clearly show (day laborers) don’t come here to utilize health services,” said Lisa Hean, a medical student involved in the research. “Many struggle to find work, and suffer all kinds of abuse and harassment.”

Roughly two dozen high school and college students, along with medical students and researchers from County Harbor-UCLA Medical Center near Torrance, conducted interviews and offered health services for more than 300 day laborers and low-income residents this summer.

The effort is part of an annual fellowship coordinated by the Department of Family Medicine at Harbor-UCLA and Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute.

One of the goals is to get medical students interested in serving disadvantaged places such as Wilmington, where there is roughly one for every 7,000 residents. The region, part of Los Angeles, is also bounded by five oil refineries and the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

The bulk of residents are Spanish-speaking, and a majority have no health insurance or regular , according to the student research.

The fellowship began in 1991 after s noticed that many patients without insurance being treated in the emergency room came from the ZIP code that covers Wilmington, said John Feng, a medical student involved in the study.

“We want to encourage the community to think about their health and be equipped to take care of themselves,” he said.

Day laborers are a particularly vulnerable population, researchers said.

Among those who came to a health fair at a day laborer site in Wilmington, more than a quarter suffered from asthma and 70 percent were considered either overweight or obese.

In subsequent interviews, all of the laborers said they migrated to America from Mexico in search of a better life, jobs and more opportunities.

“These reasons are something we should celebrate, not look down on,” said Chardonnay Vance, a medical student.

Many of these laborers, however, endure poor and dangerous working conditions and earn meager wages, from $276 to $1,162 a month.

The students touted federal legislation known as the Dream Act, which would provide citizenship to some youth who are here illegally, and state legislation that would provide universal health care.

They also encouraged the community to help get the word out about state and federal programs that are now available, particularly for children.

“It is not paperwork or legal documents, but passion and work ethic that make you part of this country,” said Brian Levin, a student at Palos Verdes High School who participated.

melissa.evans@dailybreeze.com

LA day laborers double as actors to teach, empower

AMY TAXIN, check Associated Press | Updated 12:35 a.m., Sunday, July 24, 2011| Source: MySanAntonio.com

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Most days, they are construction workers and painters and maids.

But twice a year, this group of day laborers morphs into actors in a traveling street theater troupe that performs at the very job centers where they and others gather to seek work across Southern California.

Blending at-times bawdy humor with a serious message about employer abuses, the Los Angeles-based Day Laborer Theater Without Borders has helped teach illegal immigrants with little education or knowledge of the law about their rights in this country.

Some who push for tougher border enforcement questioned whether the effort encourages illegal immigration. But advocates say the group and others like it elsewhere in the U.S. have done more to educate and empower workers than lectures or handouts ever could.

“When they take it to the streets, to the corners, they use the language that day laborers use because they know it,” said Pablo Alvarado, executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, which helps fund the theater troupe. “The minute they start doing that, people gather around just like that.”

The troupe had its start three years ago when day laborers found themselves at the heart of a heated national debate over illegal immigration. Now, the group is helping other troupes get going in San Francisco and Maryland, while a similar group already exists in New Orleans.

On a recent weekday morning, three dozen day laborers waiting for construction gigs at a hiring site in Los Angeles filed inside and grabbed seats on folding chairs to watch the troupe’s first performance of a two-week summer tour.

The first skit was called “Modern Slavery.” Two actors wearing blue uniforms hurried to the front of the hiring center, where space had been set aside for a makeshift stage. Cracking jokes rife with sexual innuendo and slang, the pair complained about the conditions at their office-cleaning job where an abusive boss tried to get his female subordinate to do more than just wash floors.

Played by another laborer, the English-barking suit-wearing boss admired the woman from behind while she scrubbed the floor — drawing laughter from the nearly all-male audience. But when he propositioned her and threatened to call immigration if she dared report him to police, the workers watching the show grew more serious.

Actors said the story line, crafted jointly during rehearsals, drew from their own experiences — which is why workers could relate to it.

“Most of us who come here, not many have schooling,” said 62-year-old Prospero Leon, a painter from Guatemala whose face lit up during the comedic parts of the performance. “They’re interested in knowing their rights.”

The idea for the theater group dates back to a 2007 production about the experiences of day laborers entitled “Los Illegals” by the Cornerstone Theater Company, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that helps build community theater. Several workers acted in the play written by Cornerstone’s artistic director Michael John Garces, and one of them later adapted the script for an ad-hoc performance at a conference of day laborers near Washington D.C.

That set the stage for the formation of a theater troupe by and for day laborers under the tutelage of Salvadoran immigrant worker-turned-artistic director, Juan Jose Magandi. In the 1990s, day laborers had mounted a similar traveling theater group but struggled with logistical problems and the cast disbanded.

“In our countries, the theater is from very elitist movements,” Magandi said. “We try to do theater from below — that’s why we use their vocabulary, their style and we share their experiences.”

Garces, who advises the current group and has helped bring acting and voice experts to train laborers as volunteer actors, said the tradition of street theater in Latin America and the fiery speeches and border-watching groups active in the immigration debate made theater a perfect fit for the subject.

Stakeholders look toward day-laborer center

By Susan Dickson, Staff Writer | July 21, 2011 | Source: CarrboroCitizen.com

As one group of residents fights Carrboro’s anti-lingering ordinance, another is looking toward a solution that could resolve the issues surrounding the law – a day-laborer center.

Though discussions are in the very early stages, local Latino leaders, law enforcement, elected officials, day laborers and other stakeholders are talking about just how this community might find a solution that could improve the situation for everyone.

In December, Orange County Justice United asked the mayors of Carrboro and Chapel Hill and others to convene a task force to examine and address the issues surrounding day laborers, and last month 30 to 40 residents and leaders came together to talk about those issues.

“I think it’s really important that we have a sanctioned place for workers so that they can be distinguished from folks who are not necessarily looking for work,” Carrboro Board of Aldermen member Randee Haven-O’Donnell said.

Day laborers, many of them Latino, often gather at the intersection of Davie and Jones Ferry roads in hopes that contractors will come by and offer them work. In November 2007, the board of aldermen approved an anti-lingering ordinance for the intersection after residents of the surrounding neighborhood complained of public alcohol consumption, public urination and littering in the areas around the intersection. The ordinance prohibits lingering at the intersection between 11 a.m. and 5 a.m.

The board recently heard claims that the ordinance is unconstitutional and voted to take another look at it when it reconvenes in September.

Mauricio Castro, a member of Justice United’s immigrant-family action team and a leader in the Latino community, said he felt it was more important to focus on a solution for day laborers than on the ordinance.

“We don’t see the ordinance at this point as a priority for the work that we’re doing because we believe that the ordinance will fix itself if we have a suitable place where the workers can gather and find work,” he said.
Haven-O’Donnell said she felt it was important to separate the issues of a possible center and the ordinance.

“If the focus is on the ordinance, then it’s fueling the negative energy of the neighbors and the community and capturing the workers when [the two issues] need not be connected,” she said. “There is a way to do this. There is a way to decouple it and that’s by getting the workers a dignified not only work station but eventually a work center,” which could provide services in addition to a gathering space.

Castro said he and others on the team are doing research on day-laborer centers and the experiences of other communities to determine how best to approach such a center. Castro said the center could be an organized setting that could provide protection for both workers and those who hire them. At the June stakeholder meeting, representatives from the National Day Laborer Organizing Network presented best-practices strategies and other information to those in attendance.

“We want people to really understand this,” Castro said. “It’s very easy these days, with the anti-immigrant rhetoric that we have, that people can take this out of context.”

Haven-O’Donnell said that one of the most important points that she took from the discussions was the need for the workers to be on board with whatever direction a possible solution takes.

“You can set up certain things, but if they’re wary of being involved and they’re not involved, they can’t help move it forward,” she said. “My key interest is making sure that their status is elevated as workers.”

El Centro Hispano, which hosted the June meeting, has been suggested as a possible location for a day-laborer center, but Castro said he wants to think outside of the box and explore all options in the community before making a decision.

“We want to do it right,” Castro said. “Part of my job and responsibility is to make sure that, at the end, there is a resolution one way or the other.

“At some point, we are going to have to make the call about whether we have a center or whether we have a corner that’s better organized,” he said.

For now, the team will continue to conduct research and educate the public, Castro said, adding that he hopes to have a more specific plan – that won’t involve fighting the ordinance – within the next six months.

The day laborers next door (Video)

July 18, 2011 | 6:00 PM | By Leslie Berestein Rojas | Source: Multi-American SCPR

What are the stories of the people who line up seeking work outside home improvement stores, patient storage facilities, the local U-Haul truck rental center?

KPCC intern Caro Rolando and reporter Corey Bridwell didn’t have to go far to find out. A group of day laborers gathers early each morning at a U-Haul location in Pasadena down the street from the station, among them this young man from the coastal Mexican state of Sinaloa, who agreed to be interviewed so long as he wasn’t identified.

He shared was what it’s like working as a jornalero without papers on the margins of the labor force, and the inherent insecurity of it, financial and otherwise.

Proposed federal legislation that seeks to limit worker exploitation was introduced in the House of Representatives last month. Under the Protect Our Workers from Exploitation and Retaliation (POWER) Act, undocumented workers who suffer severe labor violations, abuse or employer retaliation could be considered for temporary legal status under what’s known as the U Visa, typically reserved for crime victims. Those involved in or witnesses to a workplace claim could also be granted a stay of removal.