Home health aides and advocates who gathered in Chinatown Tuesday to decry the recent settlement of $30 million between 42 agencies and 120,000 workers represented by the largest healthcare union in the nation, 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East.
At the protest organized by Ain’t I A Woman?!, signs like “historic insult,” and “1199 loves sweatshop bosses” captured the sentiment of the attendees, who considered the amount in the settlement as an insult to the years of effort that have been put in the ongoing battle to end 24-hour shifts and receive unpaid wages.
“1199 do you even dare to tell workers how much back pay they will receive from this settlement for years and years of violence of the 24-hour work day? One day amounts to 11 hours of unpaid wages … How many hours, minutes, or even seconds will the workers receive from the settlement? Tell them now,” Yolanda Zhang, one of the organizers, told the attendees.
The arbitrated settlement, where each party selects an independent, third party to reach an authoritative judgment, is the result of a 2019 class action grievance filed by 1199SEIU against 42 home health aid agencies. The union claimed that employers had violated federal wage and hour laws pertaining to unpaid wages for interruptions of sleep and meal times on 24-hour shifts. It also included unpaid overtime between January and October 2015, and travel time prior to 2015.
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