{"id":981142,"date":"2026-08-05T00:06:29","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T00:06:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/981142\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T00:06:29","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T00:06:29","slug":"nyc-home-healthcare-workers-stop-week-long-hunger-strike-over-24-hour-workdays-vow-to-continue-fighting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/981142\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC home healthcare workers stop week-long hunger strike over 24-hour workdays, vow to continue fighting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dozens of home health care workers ended a weeklong hunger strike<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

This spring and summer, the \u201cNo More 24\u201d coalition organized a string of protests, picket lines,\u00a0sit-ins,<\/a> and two hunger strikes, waging an all-out pressure campaign to ban the 24-hour workday.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aWe women have been belittled for a long time, and the care work we do is even more demeaned,\u201d they said. \u201cWe have had enough.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe 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,\u201d the email said. \u201cIn 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coalition members told amNewYork that although they had been consistently protesting outside City Hall, Speaker Menin\u2019s office had not recently reached out to speak with or negotiate with workers.<\/p>\n

Speaker Menin\u2019s office said they are working on a response to amNewYork\u2019s questions about the UN\u2019s email and the state of negotiations.\n<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Governor Hochul did not comment on the pending city council legislation, but expressed the governor\u2019s support for home health aides in a statement.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cOur 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,\u201d they said in an email. \u201cGovernor Hochul is committed to ensuring our workers receive any wages they are owed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Council Member Christopher Marte (D-Manhattan), who sponsored the No More 24 Act, Intro 303, slammed elected officials who haven\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aWe 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\u2019re going to support us or be against us,\u201d Marte said.<\/p>\n

\"WorkersWorkers 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<\/p>\n

While recent protests have highlighted Speaker Menin\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Supporters of the bill have said that it would require 24-hour shifts to be split into two 12-hour shifts, but the bill\u2019s language<\/a> does not explicitly use those terms.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aIf you\u2019re approved for a 24-hour shift, it means that you are not eligible for a split shift,\u201d Garcia said. \u201cThey\u2019re two different authorizations. They live in two different parts of the state regulations.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aIt\u2019s just as likely, perhaps more likely, that nobody comes at all,\u201d she said.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0Jose Hernandez, \u200aadvocacy 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.<\/p>\n

\u200a\u201dIf they determine that we can be served by 24-hour live-in services, that\u2019s what we get,\u201d He said. \u201cWe don\u2019t have any say in that process. You either get it or you stay in the nursing facility until the fair hearing process.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other people with disabilities, like Raine Reilly, who uses a wheelchair and supports the \u201cNo More 24\u201d campaign and Intro 303, told amNewYork that those in opposition to the bill are \u201cfear-mongering\u201d people with disabilities by threatening them with the potential loss of health insurance.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce 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,\u201d Reilly said. \u201cBut if you\u2019re at the same company and they move to two split 12-hour shifts, that\u2019s not starting the process over from scratch. It only starts over from scratch when you start from scratch. So, they\u2019re fear-mongering, they\u2019re saying that anybody who has 24-hour care is going to completely lose their care.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dozens of home health care workers ended a weeklong hunger strike Tuesday in an attempt to pressure City…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":981143,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[393724,5229,393725,188592,149603,393726,393727,393728,393729,108551,175377,393730,393731,405,403,5226,5225,388538,5228,5227,393732,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,393733],"class_list":["post-981142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-24-hour-shifts","tag-america","tag-caregiver-labor-rights","tag-christopher-marte","tag-city-council-legislation","tag-disability-rights-debate","tag-home-care-policy-nyc","tag-home-health-care-workers","tag-hunger-strike-nyc","tag-immigrant-workers","tag-julie-menin","tag-labor-protests-nyc","tag-medicaid-home-care","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-no-more-24-act","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-united-nations-intervention","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-worker-exploitation-claims"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=981142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/981143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=981142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=981142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=981142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}