This morning I woke up to read this article in Huffington Post which expounds on this reporting by MSNBC, Obama administration weighs delay for raising wages
In a nutshell the White House/Dept. of Labor is considering not implementing a new wage and hours rule concerning home healthcare workers that was supposed to begin in 2015. This is bringing some long overdue basic wage law concerning overtime to a segment of the labor market that has long been wrongly excluded from such protections. This group of workers is excited about the forthcoming positive economic changes that are about to enter their lives.
So sorry, unprotected and overlooked worker bees who are in the trenches actually caring for the nations home-bound, disabled and/or elderly population, but the Obama Labor Department may put your little bit of economic justice on hold because an industry lobbyist has enlisted a Republican Senator to put "pressure" on the Labor Department to delay the implementation of the rule.
The Labor Department is also hearing from the National Association of Medicaid Directors who, along with the industry, would prefer not paying people under the new standards for another year and a half. According to the article, this group says they don't have the "tools" necessary to comply with the rule.
Oh really? What special tools are required to pay people overtime? Dear Medicaid Directors - you can use the same departments and staff and clocking in and out mechanisms you are using right now. But when the hours go over certain constraints, you pay the people by their hours times 1.5. See how easy that is? Didn't your Director position require basic third grade arithmetic?
Labor Department at this stage is apparently only considering this unconscionable delay. Let's add our voices to this deliberation over denying people of pay for time earned:
Labor Department! Stop considering it. Do what you said you would do and ensure the wage and hour compliance these workers are entitled to.
The MSNBC report cited above concludes with this:
Home care workers are key members of President Obama’s winning electoral coalition— more than 90% are women and a majority are African-American, Latino, and Asian-American. These were the crucial voters that helped Obama win the White House twice. As he was preparing for his first presidential bid in 2007, Obama spent a day with SEIU home care worker Pauline Beck.
“One of the things I remember about Pauline was her patience,” Obama said of Ms. Beck, who was at the White House in December 2011 for the president’s announcement. “She was patient with me even when I didn’t wring out the mop properly or didn’t shake out the sheets before putting them in the laundry bin.”
But if the Obama administration delays labor protections for Beck and the two million other home care workers – will this key element of the Obama coalition continue to have patience with the president?
In answer to the question posed by MSNBC as to whether the home care workers " a key element" of the Obama coalition continue to have patience - why should they?
Why should their needs to simply be paid what they are due be sacrificed because some industry and its lobbyist and a Republican Senator accompanied by some apparently incompetent Medicaid Directors say they should be shafted for another year and a half?
This is not a hard decision or a complex decision or a particularly difficult decision. The workers deserve their pay. Period. Do it.
If the Obama administration and the Labor Department are so befuddled by a very simple question of Right vs. Wrong and the rights of the Mighty over the rights of the small, then I simply don't know what to say. You don't want to hear it.
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