Readers React: Overtime pay for California’s home care workers

To the editor: It is regrettable that California reneged on extending overtime protections to the 400,000 home care aides in the In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) program. California can include home care workers under state wage and hour laws while maintaining adequate levels of services and support to consumers simply by ending the exclusion of IHSS workers from California’s Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. (“California won’t pay overtime to home aides after judge’s order,” Jan. 17)

The exclusion of home care aides from federal labor protections is the result of a history of discrimination against women, particularly women of color, who have long done domestic labor. California has the opportunity to right this longtime injustice for hundreds of thousands of the state’s home care aides and set an example for the nation.

Jodi M. Sturgeon, New York

The writer is president of the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute.

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