The Trump regime wants to roll back Obama-era wage protections for about 3 million U.S. home care workers. Home care is an industry that continues to grow as the U.S. population ages. These workers are essential but hard-pressed by low wages and high costs. Like other service and precarious jobs, the industry is plagued by high turnover at 80% a year.
The protections Trump wants to steal from the people who care for our parents and grandparents include rights to overtime and at least the federal minimum wage. Most U.S. workers have benefited from these protections since the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, when the labor movement was strong enough to win such things.
The extension of these protections to home care workers, proposed in 2013 and implemented in 2015, was not a gift from the capitalist government but the result of further struggles by home care workers, who are disproportionately women, people of color, and immigrants.
The rights were hard-won. Unions like SEIU locals across the country fought for this legislation. The home care agency bosses tried unsuccessfully to stop it. The Home Care Association of America — which today represents 4,300 home care agencies — sued to stop the rule from going into effect. They lost and only delayed it.
Home care workers have bills to pay just like every other worker. Why should they get less?
The Trump administration claims they are going after home care workers’ rights (pushing down wages) to address the affordability crisis — a crisis that Trump continues to downplay. It’s the same message he tells the people all the time: Times are tough, so you need to make some sacrifices.
While they stoke war, murder people in the street, and do nothing real to push down the price burden for working people, they find another easy target: home care workers.
It is undeniable that home care is so expensive as to be out of reach for many working-class people. Workers are paid too little, families are charged too much, and the agencies make money on both ends.
Home care, like child care, is increasingly unaffordable. Many people lack savings, retirement and pensions from a job. The capitalists continue to get richer by shifting the burden of the economy’s deep problems onto the working class. High prices at the grocery store are part of this. Trump’s cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and other social programs are making a bad situation worse.
Access to home care or quality nursing home care should be a right. It should not be a privilege that only some can afford. However, access can be expanded while also fairly compensating home health workers. The money is there. The working class creates so much wealth — all the wealth of society — but most is suctioned off by the capitalist class, with the backing of their government.
Instead of enabling billionaires to buy their third, fourth, or fifth mansion — or using billions to bomb Palestinian children or surround sovereign countries with naval armadas — the government could actually provide people with the support they need. At the very least, they could cover working-class people’s bills. The U.S. government will drop many billions without discussion when it comes to bombing people somewhere. That’s a giveaway to the weapons manufacturers, yet they say there is no money to help the people they claim to represent.
But billionaire Trump doesn’t care about affordability. If he did, he would never support a “solution” that involves squeezing a whole sector of already-vulnerable workers even more. Born into wealth and continuing to serve his own class, he represents the blood-sucking capitalist system.
He has no solutions for working people. Momentum to solve affordability and other problems will come as a result of people’s movements, like that of the home care workers.
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