‘Invisible’ Home Care Workers Continue to Fight for Multi-Million Dollar Wage Theft Investigation
New York City home care workers rally outside the Chinese-American Planing Council headquarters this week demanding the Labor Dept. resume investigating their wage theft claims. Photos/Joe Maniscalco
By Joe Maniscalco
New York State Governor Kathy Hochul continues to block resumption of a sweeping wage theft probe into the home care industry this week despite a new ruling in favor of home care workers demanding action.
Home care workers insisting they are owed tens of millions of dollars after years of round-the-clock shifts rallied outside of the swanky lower Manhattan offices of the Chinese-American Planning Council [CPC] on Jan. 7—one of the most influential home care employers in the state.
They were there to renew their calls on the New York State Department of Labor [NYSDOL] to resume the multi-year wage theft probe it abruptly abandoned in 2023, and to demand the CPC pay monies that are owed to them after working 24-hour shifts, while only being paid for roughly half the time.
“I worked 24-hour shifts with no sleep, and CPC stole 11 hours of my wages every shift,” 68-year-old retired CPC home care worker Gui Zhu Chen said on Wednesday. “Not only that, they [CPC] also threatened and retaliated against me. They said if I continued to clock in at night to demand my wages, they would have me arrested and jailed. I filed a complaint against them with the Department of Labor in 2019. Now, the court has finally ruled that the Department of Labor must also pursue unpaid wages for hundreds of unionized home care workers like me—so I demand that the CPC immediately compensate me for my hard-earned money.”
State Supreme Court Judge Gerald W. Connolly in the fall of 2024 ruled the NYSDOL’s decision to close its wage theft investigations into the home care industry on grounds the agency had limited resources and workers were already covered by arbitration as part of their union contracts—amounted to arbitrarily creating a rule without going through proper procedures, and annulled the cancellation of the probe.
Home care workers who worked 24-hour shifts at roughly half the pay insist they are owed tens of millions of dollars in stolen wages.
On Jan. 2, another state Supreme Court judge—Justice Daniel C. Lynch—delivered a further ruling granting the petitioners’ motion for class certification.
“It is further ordered that the court’s October 9, 2024 order annulling NYSDOL’s decisions to terminate its investigations into petitioners’ complains is extended to the members of the class certified therein,” Justice Lynch wrote in his decision.
“Justice Lynch’s ruling reinforces that workers have the right to pursue those claims collectively, and that state agencies cannot simply walk away from their enforcement responsibilities.”
Council Member Chris—sponsor of the “No More 24” bill in the New York City Council that would ban round-the-clock shifts if passed—said Justice Lynch’s decision bolsters efforts to restart the NYSDOL’s wage theft probe.
“Justice Lynch’s ruling reinforces that workers have the right to pursue those claims collectively, and that state agencies cannot simply walk away from their enforcement responsibilities,” the Manhattan legislator told Work-Bites this week. “Home care workers repeatedly show up because for years they’ve felt ignored. The responsibility hasn’t shifted: ensure full compliance with wage laws, respect the dignity of workers, and require the Department of Labor to do its job.”
Yolanda Zhang, a spokesperson for the Ain’t I a Woman Campaign advocating on behalf of home care workers, called Justice Lynch’s ruling a victory “not only for union workers, but for all home care workers, as it is a signal to all sweatshop bosses that the wages must be paid back immediately.”
Retired home care worker Gui Zhu Chen, 68, says she worked 24-hour shifts with no sleep—and that the Chinese-American Planning Council “stole 11 hours” of her wages “every shift.”
“This victory also comes after workers persistently protesting—they just staged their latest action three weeks ago—and elected officials calling out Hochul’s failed labor law enforcement for months,” Zhang said this week. “As we enter the New Year, we are confident that this news will encourage even more from our community to fight for our hard earned wages and health.”
Both the Governor’s Office and the Chinese-American Planning Council, however, are claiming the ruling has no impact on ongoing efforts to appeal Justice Connolly’s earlier decision regarding the resumption of the wage theft probe.
“This decision was a technical, procedural ruling regarding class action status in a matter between the petitioners and the State,” a CPC spokesperson said in a statement released after Wednesday’s home care worker rally outside the organization’s Suffolk Street headquarters. “The Court did not make a ruling on the merits of the claims or order any cases to be reopened on our subsidiary, the CPC Home Attendant Program (CPCHAP),”
The CPC further blasted the Ain’t I A Woman Campaign for allegedly spreading “misinformation” about the organization, taking particular issue with a flyer distributed to passersby during Wednesday’s rally depicting Chinese-American Planing Council CEO Wayne Ho with devil horns and accusing the organization of stealing $90 million in wages from home attendants.
“The Chinese-American Planning Council is deeply concerned and disappointed that the Ain’t I a Woman Campaign staff and organizers—not the home care workers—continue to mischaracterize legal proceedings to attack CPC. Most recently, they circulated a flyer distorting the facts and spreading false claims about a New York Supreme Court decision to falsely target CPC,” the organization said.
“DOL Must Follow New Court Ruling”: Home care workers rallying outside the Chinese-American Planning Council HQ on Wednesday send a clear message to the Labor Department.
One of the things the Chinese-American Planning Council says in untrue is that its affiliate—the Chinese American Planning Council Home Attendant Program—has the authority to split 24-hour cases into two 12-hour split shifts.
“The Ain’t I a Woman Campaign’s own legal filing acknowledges that the State Department of Health and Managed Care Organizations have the authority to do so via Medicaid,” a spokesperson for the organization argued this week.
But as Work-Bites reported here, the Chinese-American Planning Council, or its affiliate, aren’t as powerless to split shifts as it might seem.
Things turned especially ugly last year during the Chinese-American Council’s 60th Anniversary gala on Wall Street when cops hauled off 14 protesters and charged them with disorderly conduct. Those arrested, according to advocates for home care attendants, included a pregnant woman and a 60-year-old. At least one picketer was also reportedly hurt before the arrests even began.
Ain’t I a Woman organizers brushed off the CPC’s objections this week, saying in part, “It is no surprise that CPC says AIW is responsible for everything since immigrant women home care workers are invisible to CPC.”
“Brave women workers have been picketing outside CPC every week for a year and a half, demanding their stolen wages, and CPC has ignored them,” a spokesperson for the group told Work-Bites in an email. “This is expected from a racist nonprofit which has been killing Chinese women for its own profit, and the profit of NY's largest insurance company Healthfirst whose CEO sits on CPC's board.”
In 2024, home care worker advocates also accused former CPC Council Board Chair Jenny Low of exerting “undue influence on the NYSDOL’s decisions” while serving as Governor Hochul’s Chief of Constituency Affairs, which ultimately led to the “cessation of investigations into workers’ cases without charges.”
The Ain’t I a Woman Campaign maintains that Justice Lynch’s latest ruling is a “very big victory” for home care workers who for years worked round-the-clock shifts without being fully compensated.
“Yesterday, workers announced a very big victory, a NY Supreme Court ruling which says [Governor Kathy] Hochul's Department of Labor must immediately reinstate the entire class of home care workers' wage theft cases that it illegally dismissed, which includes hundreds of workers,” the group further told Work-Bites.