Dozens of house care staff settled in Wednesday for a sit-in outdoors Metropolis Corridor, calling on Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the Metropolis Council to help laws that will ban 24-hour shifts they are saying has ravaged their bodily and emotional well-being.
The sit-in of indeterminate size is the most recent escalation by New York’s house care staff, who for greater than a decade have sought to finish state guidelines that enable 24-hour house care staff to be paid for less than 13 hours a day. The shifts are permitted so long as staff are allotted three hours for meal breaks and no less than 5 hours of sleep with out interruption.
Employees declare they routinely work as much as 96 straight hours with out relaxation — whereas getting paid for less than a fraction of that point.
The organizers and staff — a lot of them aged immigrant ladies from Asia and Latin America — gathered on Broadway close to Murray road, braving unseasonably chilly temperatures and vowing to remain till the Mayor and the Council approve a invoice that will cap shifts at 12 hours a day. The shift would successfully change 24-hour shifts with a pair of 12-hour shifts. Some employee allies, together with town’s employee safety company, say the trouble should be supported with further state funding.
Mireya Silva mentioned she was pressured into early retirement because of the bodily pressure of her work. The 73-year-old mentioned she’s had a number of surgical procedures to deal with power ache and accidents she’s sustained on the job, together with spinal points from standing for hours at a time and turning over sufferers of their beds, together with stress fractures on her palms from wrangling sufferers and carting their wheelchairs.
“After all, I might have labored longer,” Silva, who retired in 2016, mentioned in Spanish. “However the work was killing me.”
“The 24-hour shift is abuse, plain and easy,” she added.
The pending proposal, which was re-introduced by Councilmember Christopher Marte in January, has 17 sponsors however has not but been put to a vote by the labor committee. The earliest the Council would vote on the invoice is March 26, and it’s not potential for the mayor to cross this or some other pending laws earlier than that date. Marte instructed THE CITY he’s “cautiously optimistic” lawmakers will have the ability to vote on his invoice by subsequent week.
Mayoral spokesperson Dora Pekec mentioned Mamdani is “dedicated to working alongside house care staff, the Council, and state authorities to cross stronger protections that enhance working situations for caregivers and guarantee they will present the high-quality care their sufferers deserve.”
“Mayor Mamdani has all the time stood with house care staff within the struggle for dignity on the job: honest wages, dependable hours, and respect owed to those that make it potential for thus many New Yorkers to stay safely at house,” Pekec added.
In December 2024, as an assemblymember and Democratic mayoral hopeful, Mamdani rallied with house care staff outdoors of the state Labor Division’s Brooklyn headquarters, declaring, “We have to finish the 24-hour work day.”
Residence care applications are administered by organizations that obtain state funding by way of Medicaid, over which the Metropolis Council has no management. State lawmakers have lengthy opposed related statewide proposals to separate up 24-hour shifts over considerations that, with out further funding, expanded employee protections might trigger nonprofit companies to threat insolvency, value staff their jobs and depart weak sufferers with out wanted care.
At a Feb. 18 listening to, a consultant from town’s Division of Shopper and Employee Safety mentioned the company supported the intent of Marte’s invoice, whereas expressing considerations that “prohibiting 24-hour shifts with out further Medicaid funding to house care suppliers might have unintended penalties for sufferers and staff.”
Changing 24-hour shifts with two 12-hour shifts might value a further $645 million per 12 months in New York Metropolis, the New York Occasions reported, citing an evaluation by 1199SEIU, the union which represents many house care staff throughout town and state.
In an interview, Marte dismissed considerations about prices as “fear-mongering,” noting that some house care companies have already voluntarily moved away from the 24-hour shift mannequin.
“We’re speaking a couple of fraction of the house care trade,” Marte mentioned, citing knowledge from DCWP that solely about 8-10% of house care staff in New York Metropolis work 24-hour shifts.
Earlier this 12 months, a state choose sided with house care staff who had been looking for to pressure the state Labor Division to reopen lots of of wage-theft instances after investigators dropped them in 2023. In court docket papers, one employee who sued the state over her dropped wage-theft case claims she is owed as a lot as $171,000 in again pay.
However staff who spoke with THE CITY have mentioned that no sum of money is sufficient to make up for the cascading well being points they accrued over a few years on the job.
Belkis Cid de Bruno mentioned her physique has “utterly deteriorated” because of greater than 10 years spent working the 24-hour shift, pointing to power ache in her knees, coronary heart points and insomnia. The 78-year-old referred to as on Mamdani and different elected officers to “finish the abuse, and do the precise factor for house care staff.”
“When the affected person sleeps, I can’t sleep, and after I need to sleep, the affected person is awake,” she mentioned in Spanish. “It’s a endless cycle.”
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