Workers in one of the fastest-growing and lowest-paid occupations in the United States got a win in federal appeals court on Friday when the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled in favor of the Obama administration's move to make home healthcare workers
eligible for minimum wage and overtime protections.
Since 1974, federal law has exempted home care workers hired through third-party staffing agencies from wage and overtime requirements. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the Labor Department has the power to interpret the law to change that exemption.
Writing for a unanimous three-judge panel, Judge Sri Srinivasan cited a "dramatic transformation" of the home care industry over the past four decades as a valid reason for the change. While most caregivers used to be directly employed by individual households, the vast majority of workers now work for staffing companies that service hundreds or thousands of customers, Srinivasan said.
Two of the judges on that unanimous panel were appointed by President Obama, one by George W. Bush.
Industry groups are of course predicting doom and "weighing all our legal options," presumably including an appeal to the notoriously anti-worker Supreme Court. But this Labor Department rule and the court decision supporting it say that a group of workers who make a median wage of less than $10 an hour, who are overwhelmingly women of color, shouldn't be carved out of the most basic workplace protections and defined as less than from the moment they step into a job—and again, one of the fastest-growing occupations in the country. This is a small, but meaningful, brake on the race to the bottom.