Weighing obligations to home care workers and Medicaid recipients

In June 2016, a US Department of Labor rule extending minimum wage and overtime pay protections to home care workers such as certified nursing assistants and home health aides survived its final legal challenge and became effective. However, Medicaid officials in certain states reported that during...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nursing ethics
Authors: Treacy, Paul C (Author) ; MacKay, Douglas (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Sage 2019
In: Nursing ethics
Further subjects:B US Department of Labor
B occupational rights
B Home care workers
B Minimum Wage
B Medicaid
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Description
Summary:In June 2016, a US Department of Labor rule extending minimum wage and overtime pay protections to home care workers such as certified nursing assistants and home health aides survived its final legal challenge and became effective. However, Medicaid officials in certain states reported that during the intervening decades when these protections were not in place, their states had developed a range of innovative services and programs providing home care to people with disabilities—services and programs that would be at risk if workers were newly owed minimum wage and overtime pay. In this article, we examine whether the Department of Labor was right to extend these wage protections to home care workers even at the risk of a reduction in these home care services to people with disabilities. We argue that it was right to do so. Home care workers are entitled to these protections, and, although it is permissible under certain conditions for government to infringe workers’ occupational rights and entitlements, these conditions are not satisfied in this case.
ISSN:1477-0989
Contains:Enthalten in: Nursing ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1177/0969733017718396