New York City Home Care Workers Announce Hunger Strike on Mamdani’s Watch
New York City home care workers campaigning for passage of the No More 24 bill announce they will go on a hunger strike starting April 16. Photos/Joe Maniscalco
By Joe Maniscalco
New York City home care workers announced Wednesday they will start a hunger strike on Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s watch beginning next week if promised City Council legislation ending mandatory round-the-clock shifts in the industry isn’t brought to the floor for a vote.
“We have been here for more than a month and we have’t seen the mayor,” home care workers rallying outside City Hall said through an interpreter on Apr. 8. “They all made the promise. We will not wait again. We call on everyone, come back April 13, we continue the sit-in—and April 16 we go on hunger strike!”
City Council Speaker Julie Menin [D-5th District] pledged to bring Intro. 303—the No More 24 bill—to the floor for a vote when she met with home care workers on Mar. 19—the second day of their latest sit-in outside the gates of City Hall.
As written, the No More 24 bill seeks to prohibit home care employers from assigning any home care employee a shift that is longer than 12 hours, consecutive 12-hour shifts, or shifts totaling more than 12 hours in any 24-hour period.
City Council Member Christopher Marte [D-1s District] introduced the legislation, along with previous incarnations of the No More 24 bill going back to 2022, in response to a years-long campaign by home care workers—the overwhelming majority of them older immigrant women of color—to end what is widely acknowledged as nothing less than “modern day slavery.”
According to the New York State Labor Department, individual home care workers who worked round-the-clock for decades while only being paid for 13 hours out of those 24-hour shifts are owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in some cases.
No More 24 advocates are calling on City Council Speaker Julie Menin to keep her pledge and bring the bill to the floor for a vote before month’s end.
“We are talking about pushing people, forcing people to do something that no other worker in no other industry would do today,” Council Member Marte told supporters outside the gates of City Hall this week. “Imagine if we told teachers they had to work 24 hours a day for 13 hours of pay. Imagine if we told cops that they had to work 24 hours a day for 13 hours of pay. Imagine if we told the City Council and the Mayor they had to work [24 hours a day for 13 hours of pay]—nobody would accept this. So, we should’t accept this for [home care workers].”
Marte had reason to hope the No More 24 bill would finally be green lit for a vote by Wednesday, but that didn’t happen.
“While we are disappointed that the bill is not being submitted today, we remain optimistic that this grave injustice will soon and finally end,” Council Member Marte told Work-Bites following Wednesday’s home care worker rally. “The workers’ decision to begin a hunger strike underscores just how urgent this issue has become. We look forward to the No More 24 Act continuing to move through the legislative process.”
Technically, there is still time for Council Member Marte’s No More 24 bill to be brought to the floor for a vote and Speaker Menin to keep her promise to home care workers before the month is out.
A spokesperson for the Speaker declined to provide further comment on Intro. 303’s status when contacted for this story, but reiterated her belief that “more must be done to prevent exploitation and ensure safe working conditions.”
“What are they trying to gain by dragging this out?” Home care worker advocate Sarah Ahn told Work-Bites on Wednesday. “They should not be playing with these people’s lives—it’s ridiculous. They should just get this done.”
Much of the pushback on the No More 24 bill is reportedly coming from the Mamdani Administration itself, despite the then-mayoral candidate telling home care workers rallying outside the Labor Department in Brooklyn last year that round-the-clock shifts in New York City’s home care industry must end.
Home care workers continue their sit-in outside the gates of City Hall on Apr. 8.
“We know that those technical breakups of thirteen hours and eleven hours for so many workers [assigned 24-hour shifts] mean nothing—that you are working every single hour of that shift—and that must come to an end,” Mamdani said.
Work-Bites made repeated attempts to reach the Mamdani administration for comment on this story, but those attempts have all gone unacknowledged and ignored.
“What is it about once they get power they forget about their priorities and their promises?” Women’s Justice NOW Executive Director Sonia Ossario told demonstrators outside City Hall on Wednesday. “We are not letting that happen. Let the City Council members decide what is going to happen here—let’s put it to a vote.”
The Legal Aid Society last month suddenly came out swinging against the No More 24 bill asserting that patients needing round-the-clock care would be adversely impacted if it were enacted.
"Intro 303 would end 24-hour shifts without replacing them with anything,” a spokesperson for the organization told Work-Bites in an e-mail on Wednesday. “It would leave very disabled people without care.”
Emergency medicine physician Makini Chisolm-Straker insists round-the-clock shifts in the New York City’s home care industry endanger the lives of both workers and patients.
The Legal Aid Society spokesperson went on to further double down and claim that there have been “many false stories about agencies switching to split shifts.”
“Agencies cannot legally do that without a change in the insurance plans’ authorization,” the spokesperson said. “The bill does nothing to address that problem. As a result, the bill puts the lives of people with disabilities at risk. We will continue to advocate vigorously for both care givers who work these shifts and care recipients. We regret that the proponents of the bill have repeatedly refused to work with the disability rights movement to work out a solution that would protect both care givers and care recipients. We believe that such a solution is possible, but this bill is not it.”
Democratic Party District Leader and Ain’t I a Woman Campaign [AIWC] member Vittoria Fariello, called out the Legal Aid Society’s opposition to the No More 24 bill during Wednesday’s home care worker rally.
“We all recognize the immoral system that demands not only low-wage workers—but that the workers work for free,” Fariello said. “To Legal Aid, it is shameful that you tried to pit patients against their caretakers, and that you suggest people choose which life is more valuable when this bill would end the abuse of workers and provide quality care for patients.”
Subjecting home care workers to 24-hour shifts, Emergency Medicine physician Makini Chisolm-Straker argued on Wednesday, is equivalent to driving drunk and endangers both workers and patients alike.
“Is that who we want taking care of gram?” Chisolm-Straker told No More 24 advocates. “Getting Insufficient sleep also increases the risk of death by heart attack and stroke. It also increases the prevalence of diabetes, arthritis, depression and hypertension. We are disproportionately represented in the exploited domestic work because the lives of immigrants, women, and people of color have been devalued and undervalued by the United States. We are seen as cheap things that can be used up, discarded, and replaced.”
Downtown Independent Democrats Member-At-Large Sommer Omar also took aim at No More 24 bill detractors.
“We refuse to let this practice persist because there are certain special interests of little moral capacity who think it’s become inconvenient to fix this problem,” she said. “And most importantly, we are not going to tolerate idle promises without any follow up action. We now have a Mayor and a Speaker of the City Council who have already stood right here and said they would end this inhumane practice. This is the time to do it.”
The City Council’s Labor and Civil Service Committee held a hearing on the No More 24 bill on Feb. 18.
“I’m really excited that [City Council] Speaker Julie Menin has been working to get this hearing so quickly in her term,” Council Member Christopher Marte told reporters outside the gates of City Hall on Feb. 18. “It really shows she cares about this population.”
No More 24 advocates held a previous hunger strike outside the gates of City Hall in March 2024.