Home care workers launch hunger strike to ban 24-Hour shifts

The fight to end 24-hour shifts in the home care industry has escalated.

On Wednesday, about a dozen home care workers – all elderly women and immigrants – vowed to camp outside City Hall on Apil 13 and then go on a hunger strike beginning April 16 until City Council Speaker Julie Menin brings the No More 24 Act to a vote. The act would ban 24-hour shifts for home care workers.

Inspired by the two-week-long hunger strike taxi workers launched in 2021 for medallion debt relief — when then-State Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani fasted alongside drivers — home care workers hope their hunger strike will garner the same political goodwill.  

Tuesday night was the deadline for Menin to submit the bill so that it could be voted on during the next council meeting on April 16. 

The missed deadline pushes a vote to late April at the earliest. It is the latest setback for supporters of the bill, which would effectively abolish 24-hour shifts in the home care industry by splitting overnight home care hours into two distinct shifts and cap the total time home health care aides could work to no more than 56 hours a week. 

Menin withdrew the bill from the Council’s agenda on March 17 after facing last-minute opposition from the Legal Aid Society, the union District Council 37, and Mamdani.

Banning 24-hour home care service, the bill’s opponents argue, could harm disabled patients who depend on 24-hour live-in care. Because of the way the state’s Medicaid law functions, they argue, splitting home-care work into two distinct shifts wouldn’t allow it to be covered by insurance as live-in care. 

During a meeting with home care workers the day after she withdrew the bill, Menin tentatively promised to push a vote to April. 

Benjamin Fang-Estrada, a spokesperson for Menin, told Documented that the speaker is committed to passing the bill and is in discussions with all stakeholders.  

“A lot of conversations are ongoing,” he said. “The speaker needs more time,” referring to the legislative process being lengthy.

Still, Menin’s decision Tuesday not to submit the bill for the April meeting drew outrage from home care workers and their advocates, prompting the hunger strike. Yolanda Zhang, a member of the Ain’t I A Woman campaign that is organizing home care workers, said the push for the bill has taken a toll on workers, many of whom are older and in poor health themselves. 

“Just last week, I spoke to someone who would’ve been with us today but had to be hospitalized,” Zhang said. “I feel vastly disappointed by Speaker Menin dragging this out day after day. The whole world saw her promising to submit the No More 24 Act to vote as is.” 

What seemed to be a done deal in early March has spiraled into a tug of war between Menin and Mamdani, who has signaled his opposition to the bill.

Three people directly familiar with the bill’s negotiations, who spoke to Documented on the condition of anonymity, said that the mayor intervened to block the bill’s passage as written in March. Influenced by the Legal Aid Society’s opposition to the bill, these people said the mayor had proposed amending the bill’s language so that it would not ban 24-hour shifts outright but give workers the option to work a 24-hour shift if they so chose.

The mayor’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the hunger strike.

The bill’s sponsor, Councilmember Christopher Marte, disagrees with opponents about the impact of the bill on disabled patients who need live-in care. 

“Today, most agencies no longer assign 24-hour shifts, and we have not seen the industry collapse or a Medicaid funding crisis,” he said. “What we have seen is home attendants able to stay working as home attendants, instead of being forced into early retirement because of brutal working conditions. We have seen improved patient care, as patients receive true 24-hour care by workers who are not deprived of sleep and time at their own homes.”

Still, as home care workers prepare to put their lives on the line on a hunger strike with no end in sight, Fang-Estrada, the speaker’s spokesperson, said that the bill’s language may need to change if it were to move forward. 

“It depends on negotiations and conversions,” he said. “Most bills go through revisions.”