Dozens of home health care workers ended a weeklong hunger strike Tuesday in an attempt to pressure City Council Speaker Julie Menin to call for a council-wide vote on a bill, which would ban providers from scheduling caregivers to work longer than 12-hour shifts at a time.
For years, a coalition of workers and advocates has been protesting the use of 24-hour work days, which they say exploits caregivers in the city, largely immigrant women of color, by forcing them to forgo legally mandated rest periods, often without pay. These workers are generally responsible for round-the-clock care of seniors and disabled individuals who cannot care for themselves for any lengthy period of time.
This spring and summer, the “No More 24” coalition organized a string of protests, picket lines, sit-ins, and two hunger strikes, waging an all-out pressure campaign to ban the 24-hour workday.
Hunger-striking home healthcare worker Ah Lin Lok, while speaking through an interpreter, described the compounding aggravation of all the roles that she and her colleagues are asked to play: cook, maid, teacher and health caregivers.
“ We women have been belittled for a long time, and the care work we do is even more demeaned,” they said. “We have had enough.”
Workers ended their hunger strike a day after the United Nations Working Group on Discrimination Against Women and Girls sent an email to Speaker Julie Menin, contacts at City Hall and Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office. The email, addressed to Hochul, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Menin, drew their attention to a previous email sent to the U.S. government that detailed the experiences of home healthcare workers in New York City and expressed concerns that the practice of 24-hour workdays may amount to inhumane treatment and forced labor.
“We are aware of ongoing hunger strike actions by home care workers and continuing legislative discussions regarding measures aimed at addressing 24-hour work schedules in New York City,” the email said. “In this context, and given that no response has been received to the communication to the Government of the United States of America to date, we wished to share the communication directly with your offices for your information and consideration.”
Coalition members told amNewYork that although they had been consistently protesting outside City Hall, Speaker Menin’s office had not recently reached out to speak with or negotiate with workers.
Speaker Menin’s office said they are working on a response to amNewYork’s questions about the UN’s email and the state of negotiations.
A spokesperson for Governor Hochul did not comment on the pending city council legislation, but expressed the governor’s support for home health aides in a statement.
“Our home care workers play an invaluable role in the lives of New Yorkers, and that is why Governor Hochul has made unprecedented investments in home care wages, increasing the minimum wage for home care aides, and securing $13 billion for home care wage increases since 2023,” they said in an email. “Governor Hochul is committed to ensuring our workers receive any wages they are owed.”
Council Member Christopher Marte (D-Manhattan), who sponsored the No More 24 Act, Intro 303, slammed elected officials who haven’t supported the bill and, without naming the speaker, Menin, over not bringing the bill to a vote. Marte and the organizers said that although they were ending the hunger strike, they would continue to protest the 24-hour workday and vowed to return with a more robust organizing effort in early October.
“ We will continue to stand, we will continue to organize, and we will continue to force council members to look these women in the eye and tell them whether they’re going to support us or be against us,” Marte said.
Workers vowed to continue the fight to ban the 24-hour workday in NYC, following a week long hunger strike which gained international recognition. Photo: Sadie Brown
While recent protests have highlighted Speaker Menin’s inaction in bringing the No More 24 Act to a vote, the sticking point for many in opposition to the bill, like some disability advocates and legal groups, comes down to language and insurance reimbursements.
Supporters of the bill have said that it would require 24-hour shifts to be split into two 12-hour shifts, but the bill’s language does not explicitly use those terms.
Belkys Garcia, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society, which opposes Intro 303, told amNewYork that when it comes to home healthcare insurance authorizations, banning a 24-hour shift and requiring a 24-hour shift to be split into two shifts are completely different things.
“ If you’re approved for a 24-hour shift, it means that you are not eligible for a split shift,” Garcia said. “They’re two different authorizations. They live in two different parts of the state regulations.”
Garcia said that if the bill, as written, were to pass, in the best-case scenario, patients approved for 24-hour care would receive a caregiver for 12 hours.
“ It’s just as likely, perhaps more likely, that nobody comes at all,” she said.
As home health providers are generally reimbursed with Medicaid dollars, failing to provide care for the full scope of services authorized and paid for by insurance could pose a legal conundrum for care agencies, Garcia speculated.
Jose Hernandez, advocacy and policy associate for the New York Association on Independent Living, who uses a wheelchair and has required 24-hour care for more than a decade, told amNewYork that he fought for years to get insurance to authorize two separate 12-hour shifts for his home healthcare. Hernandez said that once he was released from a nursing facility, the state evaluated him to determine what level of care he could be authorized for.
”If they determine that we can be served by 24-hour live-in services, that’s what we get,” He said. “We don’t have any say in that process. You either get it or you stay in the nursing facility until the fair hearing process.”
Other people with disabilities, like Raine Reilly, who uses a wheelchair and supports the “No More 24” campaign and Intro 303, told amNewYork that those in opposition to the bill are “fear-mongering” people with disabilities by threatening them with the potential loss of health insurance.
“Once you get your hours, you are authorized for those hours and in order for it to be taken away, you have to start from scratch,” Reilly said. “But if you’re at the same company and they move to two split 12-hour shifts, that’s not starting the process over from scratch. It only starts over from scratch when you start from scratch. So, they’re fear-mongering, they’re saying that anybody who has 24-hour care is going to completely lose their care.”