Backlash Against New Version of ‘No More 24’ Bill
Home care workers and their allies rallied outside the gates of City Hall on May Day. Photo/Joe Maniscalco
By Steve Wishnia
City Council Speaker Julie Menin has introduced a version of the No More 24 Act that would extend how long home health-care workers may still do 24-hour shifts by six months.
The bill would generally limit the attendants’ workload to 12 hours per day and 56 hours a week. But Intro 303-B, the amended version introduced on the night of May 5, would permit employers to have workers do 24-hour shifts until Oct. 1, 2027, six months after the measure would go into effect, “if the home care employee knowingly agrees to work such hours in writing.”
The bill was “aged” on the night of May 6, a Council spokesperson told Work-Bites, which means it can be brought to a vote by the Labor Committee and then the full Council at any time. The Labor Committee already held a hearing on it, in February.
“As part of the ongoing legislative process, the Council has updated the bill after many conversations with stakeholders,” the Council spokesperson said in a statement. “We look forward to phasing out the 24-hour workday, an outdated practice that places workers under extreme physical and emotional strain.”
The Ain’t I a Woman Campaign, which has organized home-care workers to eliminate 24-hour shifts, denounced the amendment. “We know from workers that ‘consent’ is total nonsense because agencies easily retaliate or pressure workers into doing 24-hour shifts,” it said in a message to supporters obtained by Work-Bites.
“Workers say agencies tell them ‘either 24 or no work,’” said Zishun Ning of Ain’t I a Woman. He fears that letting 24-hour shifts continue with workers’ supposed consent “opens the door for them to extend it.”
“Workers say agencies tell them ‘either 24 or no work,’” said Zishun Ning of Ain’t I a Woman. He fears that letting 24-hour shifts continue with workers’ supposed consent “opens the door for them to extend it.”
State regulations allow employers to pay home-care workers for only 13 hours of a 24-hour shift, on the grounds that they are supposed to have 11 hours off to eat and sleep. In practice, workers commonly have to get up in the middle of the night to take care of their patients, such as helping them go to the toilet, changing diapers, or turning them over to avert bedsores.
The lack of Medicaid funding to pay full wages has been the main objection to prohibiting 24-hour shifts. Menin introduced the amended version hours after a Council hearing May 5 on economic opportunities for disabled people. Witnesses said they feared they could lose their care and be forced to go into nursing homes if providers were required to pay 24 hours of wages without funding to do so.
“Protecting home-care workers and consumers cannot be treated as an either/or choice. Home-care workers should be paid for every hour that they are required to be in a consumer’s home, and round-the-clock care for those who need it must be preserved,” the 1199SEIU union, which represents a significant share of the city’s home-care workers, said in a statement. “1199SEIU supports legislation abolishing 24-hour shifts that fully funds every home-care hour worked, to prevent vulnerable New Yorkers from losing access to care while at the same time ensuring that workers are compensated fairly. Unfortunately, this amended version does not set aside any additional dollars to fund care.”
1199SEIU estimates that cost at $460 million a year. The city Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) has estimated that about 25,000 to 30,000 of home-care workers do 24-hour shifts.
Councilmember Christopher Marte (D-Manhattan), Intro 303’s sponsor, had already agreed to delay the bill’s going into effect until April 1, 2027, to give time to obtain state Medicaid funding.
The bill also allows 24-hour shifts to continue if they are permitted by a union contract in effect on Dec. 31, 2027, until that agreement expires. An 1199SEIU spokesperson said that it has different contracts with multiple agencies, so they have different expiration dates.
The bill requires employers to keep workers’ consent forms and to document “each break, including meal or sleep periods, that is excluded from such home care employee’s work hours in accordance with applicable law.” Workers are supposed to have three hours off for meals and eight for sleep. The amended version would increase the maximum fine for illegally firing workers from $500 to $2,500.
It would also have DCWP do a study of the industry, due by April 2028. That would include the number of people receiving home care; the number of workers and agencies providing it; how many workers are covered by union contracts and how many employed directly by recipients; the “total number of home care employees” who were assigned to a shift longer than the legal limit; and the number who reported to their employer that they did not receive the required time off during a longer shift, including at least five hours of uninterrupted sleep.
Councilmember Marte told Work-Bites during a No More 24 sit-in outside the gates of City Hall in March that his office was happy to talk to “colleagues or folks in the industry—but our fundamental line in the sand is to make sure we end the 24-hour practice.”
Speaker Menin briefly met with home care workers outside the gates of City Hall during the second day of their sit-it on March 19 where she pledged to bring the No More 24 bill to the floor in April.
Home care workers—aware of ongoing efforts to water down the No More 24 bill—also understood that pledge to mean their legislation would remain intact with no changes.
Menin’s office later said the Speaker “wouldn’t ever agree” that the language of the No More 24 bill would remain unchanged because “that’s simply not how it works.”
Home care workers and their allies plan to hold an 11 a.m. rally outside the offices of the Legal Aid Society at 199 Water Street on May 11 to protest what they say is the agency’s efforts, along with the Mamdani administration, to undermine the No More 24 bill and legitimize “modern day slavery.”
—additional reporting by Joe Maniscalco
Editor’s Note: Work-Bites will have more as this story as it develops.