It’s All Connected: NYC Workers See Link to ‘No More 24’ Hunger Strikers’ Struggle

NYC home health aides fighting back against mandatory 24-hour workdays went on hunger strike this week — with increasing support from workers in other sectors. Photos/Videos/Joe Maniscalco

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams can continue sitting on the “No More 24” bill and saying there’s nothing she can do to stop bosses from forcing home health aides to work around-the-clock. But working class New Yorkers are increasingly connecting the dots about what’s really going on here: lots of kowtowing to the bosses at everyone else’s expense.

“I think in New York City, our insurance companies and home care agencies are extra greedy — and they're extra happy to get Adrienne Adams in their pockets,” Jun Chang, an organizer with the Chinese Staff & Workers Association, told Work-Bites outside City Hall on Wednesday.

About 20 home health aides and a few supporters fighting to bring Intro. 615 to the floor for a vote and end mandatory 24-hour workdays kicked off a five-day hunger strike outside the gates of City Hall on March 20.

None of the home health aides are under 55, and many are older. They’ll camp out day and night in the shadow of City Hall until Monday, subsisting on nothing but coconut water and chicken broth.

Home health aides speak out before beginning their hunger strike outside City Hall.

“If this is a state issue, why isn't it happening in Buffalo?” Chang continued. “This doesn’t exist in Buffalo…the 24-hour workday doesn't exist in Albany. But there are 24-hour home care patients there — so, I don't see how this is a state issue.”

Council Member Chris Marte’s “No More 24” legislation builds off of already existing legislation protecting workers in the fast food industry to include home health aides in New York City forced to work around-the-clock shifts.

“It’s a shame that for over ten years people have ignored these workers,” Marte said at Wednesday’s home health aide hunger strike launch. “It’s a shame that for over two years, this City Council — a majority women…the most progressive…one that says every single day that this is a union town….[and] this is the most progressive city — refuses to do anything.”

Members of the Cross-Union Retirees Organizing Committee [CROC], who are fighting back against NYC’s campaign to strip them of their Medicare benefits, stand in solidarity with home health aides.

Supporters from the New York Taxi Workers Alliance [NYTWA], Legal Services Staff Association [LSSA], Local 2320, UAW, Amazon Labor Union [ALU], No Tech for Apartheid, She Wolf Bakery Union and Red Song, however, say the New York City Council’s failure to protect exploited home health aides — largely older women of color — goes beyond being shameful.

“We know full well that this exploitation of labor is deeply connected to the racism and sexism within our society,” NYTWA President Bhairavi Desai told the more than 100 rallying ahead of the hunger strike’s launch. “It is not a coincidence that the majority of workers are women of color — a group of people whose labor is already overlooked.”

Earlier in the week, Speaker Adams joined embattled Mayor Eric Adams in touting the recent deal providing 80,000 low-wage social service workers employed by non-profits under contract with the city with a 9.2 percent pay raise spread out over three years.

Home health aides and their supporters rallying outside City Hall this week call on Speaker Adrienne Adams to finally allow Intro. 615 to come to the floor for a vote.

When Work-Bites asked why home health aides weren’t also being offered some relief, the speaker reiterated her view that ending mandatory 24-hour shifts for local home health aides is a state problem.

“I absolutely support the workers and their desire to improve their working conditions — that goes without saying,” Speaker Adams said. “This Council has advanced meaningful labor protections and we are going to continue to do that, but the City Council cannot — and we keep saying this — change [New York State] Department of Labor regulations or Medicaid reimbursement rates. So, the solution to address the 24 hour home care [issue] has to occur at the state level.”

Striking Local 2320 administrative assistant Denise Romero Gonzalez told protesters outside City Hall on Wednesday that non-profit organizations and the health care industry have exploited service workers for decades, but that they are now fighting back.

“All workers deserve to paid enough to provide for our families,” she said. “But we also deserve to work in conditions that allow us to spend time with them, and provide us with a quality of life and good health.”

Chang said home health aides who have spent the last decade fighting back against mandatory 24-hour workdays know that the system is not gonna listen to them — and that’s why they are going on a hunger strike and raising working class consciousness across NYC.

"They don't have a voice,” he said, "but they have the consciousness. They know that the system's not gonna listen to them, and that the system's gonna extract what they can from them until they can't do it anymore — and then they're gonna throw them away. But they are some of the most [conscious] workers out here in the city.”

Michael Mangieri, representing the newly-formed union at She Wolf Bakery, warned that it is important for all workers to back home health aides fighting for passage of the “No More 24” bill — because the bosses could next be targeting them for exploitation.

“But we know that when workers come together across industries and across artificially-created boundaries, we have the power to hold bosses, companies and the City Council accountable,” Mangieri said.