Home Health Aides’ Long Wait for Wage Fairness

More than three million home health aides — a lifeline for the elderly who are neither in institutions nor able to manage life’s mundane tasks on their own — are learning exactly how sclerotic the nation’s regulatory processes can be. Nearly half of home health aides are so poorly paid, they must rely on public benefits like food stamps and energy assistance. Sixteen months ago, President Obama promised to change Labor Department rules that exclude them from the protections of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which guarantees minimum wage and overtime to all other categories of American workers. The exclusion…

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