Home Health Aides Ignored

The Supreme Court, who ruled that they were exempt from minimum wage and overtime protections, dealt a stunning economic blow to home health aides, an industry dominated by poor black women.

—“The court’s ruling is another blow to struggling, low-wage women,” said Nancy Duff Campbell, a co-president of the National Women’s Law Center. “It means that home care workers, who are overwhelmingly low-income women of color, will continue to be unfairly treated despite providing essential services to our growing elderly and disabled population.”

That means that these women, who provide healthcare services to the elderly and the disabled, could toil all day long making below minimum wage (US $5.15 an hour nationally, US$7.15 in NY) and never making overtime.

Many associate this kind of economic slavery with the reality of illegal immigrants in this country, but poor, mostly African-American women whose families have lived in this country for generations are being suffer a similar fate, and it's now sanctioned by the US government.